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gorgik@aol.com
http://www.lthredge.com/ds/
An
internationally known author of both fiction and nonfiction on BDSM
themes, david stein has been published in a wide range of current and
defunct magazines including Drummer,
Bound & Gagged, International Leatherman, Mach,
PowerPlay, DungeonMaster, Checkmate,
Prometheus, Sandmutopia Guardian, Servants’
Quarters, and the online e-zines Crawl,
RopedWeb, and All American Kink.
Pieces of his have also appeared in the anthologies Leatherfolk,
edited by Mark Thompson (Alyson, 1991); Horsemen: Leathersex Short
Fiction, edited by Joseph W. Bean
(Leyland, 1997); and SM Classics, edited by Susan Wright (Masquerade, 1999). Last May david’s epic-length novel, Carried Away: An S/M Romance,
was published by Daedalus (Los Angeles, www.daedaluspublishing.com).
Historically, david is most associated with the coining of the phrase
“safe, sane, and consensual S/M” in 1983 for Gay Male S/M Activists
(GMSMA), an organization that he co-founded and helped lead for 11 years
(he remains a member but is no longer active in a leadership role). The
phrase subsequently spread throughout the U.S. and beyond, especially
via the S/M-Leather Contingent at the 1987 March on Washington for
Lesbian and Gay Rights, which used “Safe Sane Consensual” as its
slogan. An essay on the history of the slogan can be found in PDF format
on his Web pages at www.lthredge.com/ds/history.htm.
Read
slave david stein's poem slavery
is/not
SENSUOUS SADIE: There is an
interesting paradox to your BDSM persona. On one hand, many of the huge
new influx of BDSM participants take the idea of “Safe, Sane, and
Consensual” for granted, not realizing your role in its creation, or
even that these ideas needed to be articulated. On the other hand, you
are also inextricably tied to those three words for the rest of your
life, almost like Leonard Nimoy never really quite got away from his
role as Spock in Star Trek. In
fact, Nimoy wrote a book called I Am Not Spock. Do you sometimes want to write a book called I
Am Not the Phrase: “Safe, Sane, and Consensual”?
DAVID STEIN: “No. The issue of my personal connection with the phrase
is trivial compared with the issue of how the phrase has been abused and
perverted in the years since it was coined. But i have to share some of
the responsibility for that, since it wasn’t until a couple of years
ago that i realized what a monster we had created. The only reason i
ever tell anyone that i was the author is so i’ll have some authority
when i explain what we meant by it back then — and what we didn’t
mean by it. Above all, we weren’t trying to establish a fucking credo!
The idea that ‘safe sane consensual’ is used to define something
like articles of faith s/m newbies are expected to absorb turns my
stomach, especially when the people doing the defining are the kind who
do s/m at a very tame, low level of intensity and think that’s where
the boundaries should be set for everyone.
“The other big problem i have is with those who come at it from the
opposite direction and claim that ‘safe sane consensual’ was always
merely a PR gimmick, a way to present a friendly face of s/m to the
public and the authorities even though we knew better. This is just
false historically, and it is as much as accuses those of us who
originally promoted the slogan of being liars. On the contrary: We did
intend to draw a distinction and to leave some kinds of sadomasochistic
behavior on one side of the line as indefensible while maintaining that
whatever fell inside the line was
defensible ethically and should
be defended politically and legally. But what we intended to leave
outside the line was things like sadistic serial killers and snuff
scenes for money, coercive s/m of all sorts, not
the edgier kinds of consensual play — unless there was a question
whether consent was even possible, as with the underage or the mentally
unbalanced. We never intended to draw the line to leave out heavy s/m,
real pain rather than symbolic pain, blood play, knifeplay, humiliation
play, 24/7 Master/slave relationships, and so on. But all these things
and more have come under the gun in recent years from self-righteous
censors and ‘dungeon monitors’ within our community waving the SSC banner!
“In my own case, my hope was that the terms ‘safe, sane, and
consensual’ would prove to be the starting point for a continuing
community-wide discussion about the elements of an s/m ethics. Instead,
what has happened is that the discussion has largely congealed around
those three terms themselves, or about the SSC slogan. The only progress
we’ve made has been with the term ‘consensual,’ where we have a
far deeper and more nuanced understanding today than we had in 1983 —
but more of that is owing to the women’s movement and the discourse
about domestic abuse than to any discussions specifically within an s/m
or D/s context. And too many people have simply tuned out, have stopped
thinking or talking about these issues — either because they think
‘the SSC creed’ already answers all the questions, or because they
think SSC has poisoned the well and must be rejected altogether before
anything new can grow.”
Sadie: You’ve written extensively about the creation of SSC, so I’m
not going to ask you to rehash that here. However, I have also
interviewed Prometheus
Contributing Editor Gary Switch, who originated the more recent “Risk
Aware Consensual Kink (RACK).” What do you think of this alternate
phrasing?
david: “While i have nothing but respect for Gary’s motives and
agree with many of his arguments, i think the problem is that we’ve
become focused on a slogan at all. The solution isn’t to replace a
flawed slogan with a (possibly) better one. And let’s face it, people
like ‘safe sane consensual’ precisely because it’s so reassuring!
‘Risk Aware Consensual Kink’ loses on every count in terms of
sloganeering because it’s too scary. Gary might say that’s good —
that it forces people to think about stuff they’d rather not think
about — and to a degree he’s right, but it’s also overkill. The
fact is, the vast majority of s/m activity is not
life-threatening in any way; the vast majority of scenes don’t even
call for a first-aid kit. Often it’s only a hint or threat of danger
that people want or need to get off. So presenting all s/m as if it’s
the sexual equivalent of skydiving or mountain-climbing is just as much
of a distortion as pretending that none of it involves real risks or
real pain.
This goes back to the historical issue — sorry for the rehash, but
it’s unavoidable! We intended ‘safe, sane, and consensual’ as a minimum standard, and if you bear that in mind, it makes perfect
sense to see the s/m community as embracing a wide range of activities,
from the lightest of sensual strokes with a deerskin flogger, say, to
excruciating cuts with a bullwhip. And all these can be done safely and
sanely, or carelessly and stupidly, at
any level. But there are lots of additional questions one might want
to ask, such as whether the activities are satisfying to those involved
or have any artistic flair or raise anyone’s spiritual awareness.
Being ‘safe, sane, and consensual’ isn’t enough to make it good
s/m.
“It might have helped a lot of folks if someone had had the guts to
say to them at some point, ‘Yes, your s/m play is safe, sane, and
consensual — but it’s also boring, predictable, and tacky. Maybe you
should be less concerned with playing by the rules and more with having
a good time.’”
Sadie: There is an interesting
thing that happens to scene personalities when they get well known.
Their “celebrity,” if you will, can either contribute to or take
away from their options in finding good partners. Considering that
you've had some challenges in finding a partner, I was wondering if you
felt that this was or was not an issue for you?
david: “Unfortunately, yes. While my modest celebrity has enabled me
to meet some wonderful Masters and others i might not otherwise have had
much chance to connect with, They have generally not been ‘in the
market’ — or if They were, weren’t looking for a slave as well
known as Themselves! It’s impossible to know, of course, what men i
haven’t met are thinking, but i’ve had enough indirect feedback to
be pretty sure that my reputation is a problem for many. The ego issue
is understandable — the risk of being known as ‘so-and-so’s
Master’ instead of the reverse — though i think the best Masters are
no more vain or hung up on ego gratification than good slaves are. They
know that what the slave worships in Them is something higher and nobler
than ego, even when its physical manifestation is Their cock or Their
boots.
“But beyond the ego issue, there’s the question of where the
slave’s first allegiance lies, to his Master or to whatever calling
led to his becoming a celebrity. In my case that was for a long time my
work with GMSMA and more recently was my novel — any writer will tell
you that a book in progress is a jealous master! Then again, for me
there’s the issue of how a potential Master feels about the things i
became known for, such as SSC. That’s one of the reasons i’ve
started speaking out lately to distance myself from the SSC puritans and
zealots — i don’t want it to ruin my love life! <g> Don’t
blame me if you’re burned by an overzealous and inexperienced dungeon
monitor who interprets ‘safe sane consensual’ as ‘don’t do
anything I wouldn’t do.’
“Nonetheless, i don’t want to suggest that this is the main reason i’m not owned! It’s just a contributing factor. The
major reasons are in me.”
Sadie: You’ve written that
“S/M releases powerful emotions and involves intense vulnerability,
and the results often aren’t pretty.” There is an unspoken party
line that as a community we need to show only our happy healthy SSC side
to the vanilla world, which will in theory increase the likelihood that
our lifestyles will be accepted. This makes it harder for us to work
through very real, but politically unpleasant issues like abuse in D/s
relationships. What is your approach to dealing with these delicate
topics?
david: “It’s notoriously hard to get reliable statistics about
s/mers, even more than about gay men and lesbians. Nonetheless, my sense
from those put out by organizations like New York City’s Anti-Violence
Project — one of the country’s veteran LGBT organizations dealing
with domestic abuse and other issues — is that there’s probably much
more abuse among people without
explicit D/s relationships than in them. Maybe it’s different with
hetero D/s, since those couples are often legally married, but i don’t
think abuse is very common at all among gay and lesbian Masters and
slaves, so i have no fear about bringing it out in the open. That’s not
to say it never happens, but in an explicit Master/slave or Daddy/boy or
other Dom/sub relationship, there is a tendency to have relatively clear
lines of authority and responsibility. In some of these relationships,
there are also explicit mechanisms for settling grievances and disputes
— how many vanilla relationships have anything like that? or even
ordinary marriages?
“What there may be in a Master/slave relationship is a way of life
that looks abusive from the
outside but really isn’t — it may even qualify as abusive according
to one of the standard checklists that you often see printed, but they
weren’t drawn up with D/s relationships in mind. So i think it’s
actually very important for more people to get to know how actual
consensual Masters and slaves live so that they won’t jump to the
wrong conclusions in such cases, or fail to recognize genuine abuse if
they see it. Even the ‘S/M vs. Abuse’ guidelines adopted at the
Leather Leadership Conference in 1998 and subsequently promulgated by
the National Coalition for Sexual Freedom (NCSF) and others (www.ncsfreedom.org/library/smvsabuse.htm)
— which takes ‘safe, sane, and consensual’ as its basis — fail
to fully take into account the special situation of a committed slave in
a 24/7 Master/slave relationship. There is no way any
‘objective’ checklist can be used to determine whether a situation
or piece of behavior is abusive, because ultimately it depends on a) the
intention of the Dominant, and b) the interpretation of the submissive.
And any third party’s access to these is limited, which is why, as
with any case of alleged domestic abuse, we have to give more weight to
the testimony of the vulnerable person, and if he or she wants to leave,
help make that happen.
“With respect to any other messy and unpleasant realities, i figure
that our enemies will uncover the truth anyway, so we may as well be
completely open from the start ourselves. The truth will out. And the
great advantage of always telling the truth is that you don’t have to
worry about keeping your lies straight.”
Sadie: You periodically visit
Master Steve at BUTCHMANN’S Academy in Tucson, Arizona. For
those readers who are unfamiliar with a slave academy, what goes on
there? Is it anything like the 24-hour BDSM orgies that go on in the
fictional slave academies?
david: “First of all, the Academy is now under the auspices of
APEX, the Arizona Power Exchange (www.arizonapowerexchange.org),
a wonderful pansexual group in Phoenix. What they call ‘The
Butchmann’s Experience’ is presented several weekends a year under
Master Steve’s direction with the same focus and largely the same
curriculum and instructors as before. There are pansexual, men-only, and
women-only sessions, and they’re all open to Masters and Dominants as
well as slaves and submissives — in fact, they don’t work well
unless both roles are well represented.
“The focus is not on BDSM technique, though a lot of technical ground
is covered, but the psychological and spiritual side of things: what
these roles we play mean in our lives, whether they make any sense
outside the bedroom or dungeon, how to integrate them into ordinary
life, or how they might point us beyond the confines of ordinary life,
and so on. It varies depending on the interests and inclinations of the
participants — different groups have different energies. As far as sex
itself goes, there’s no sexual activity in the strict sense during
class hours in the daytime and never any between the instructors and the
students. What the students do with each other on their own time,
particularly if they’re part of an established couple, is their own
business. In the gay sessions i’ve participated in, there are plenty
of hard dicks at various times as slaveboys — or Masters! — get
excited by this or that activity or experience, but no ejaculations.
“As noted, different techniques — like flogging or mummification —
will be explained and demonstrated, and then the participants will get
to try them out as either top or bottom, depending on T/their chosen
role. That’s why it’s important for there to be students from both
sides! The instructors are there to supervise and help, not to do all
the work. Other class periods will be just discussion, sometimes with
the Dominants and submissives separated into different groups, sometimes
together. All of that is not very different from any number of other
BDSM educational efforts all around the country. But what makes the
Butchmann’s experience almost unique, i believe, is what occurs in
between the formal teaching sessions, when the slaves help out with food
preparation and service, or similar duties. i can’t really speak for
what the Dominants get out of the experience, but one of the most
important lessons a slave learns at a Butchmann’s weekend is that
he/she is a slave all the time, and needs to think and behave as such,
not just in the dungeon or the bedroom. But that’s a good thing, as
Master Steve would say, not a sad or demeaning thing. One of the other
key lessons is that a committed slave is marvelous and rare, and that
she or he deserves to be loved and cherished — what’s sad is that
this comes as a revelation to so many.
“Perhaps i should explain, however, that most of my visits with Master
Steve have been outside of formal Butchmann’s weekends. Because of the
demands of my career as a magazine editor, living by an iron-clad
production schedule, i’ve rarely been able to visit during a
Butchmann’s gay weekend, so my earliest visits were for private
training in Master Steve’s household. After several years of these
visits, during which my trust in Him and respect for Him kept growing, i
asked Him to become my Guardian Master, or Master pro tem, until such
time as i am owned again. He agreed, and He gave me a token, a turquoise
disc, which i have worn around my neck ever since, at first on a rawhide
thong and now on a silver chain He gave me last Christmas. W/we will
always have a heart connection, even if i belong to another Master
someday.”
Sadie: During one of your
training visits you set a personal record for continuous bondage without
a break of 60 hours. What is the key difference for you in how this kind
of bondage affected you? For example, you wrote that you felt “safe
and secure” when wearing the restraints, even though they were a
challenge in doing some household tasks.
david: “This was actually about six years ago! i’m not sure
i’d be up for it today — my arthritis has gotten a good deal worse,
and the last thing i need is any kind of immobility. But the fantasy
of long-term bondage has been with me for a long time, and Master Steve
gave me a taste of it. Since the particular restraints He used weren’t
high-security and i could have released myself at any time, it was also
a test of extended obedience, which i’m very happy i passed! For me,
bondage = being wanted, which is why it always makes me happy to be tied
up or bound: it proves to my skeptical subconscious that the other guy
really does want me after all, or else why would he bother to restrain
me? And it gave Master Steve pleasure every time He saw me in
restraints, or heard me shuffle by, which is reason enough in itself.”
Sadie: You also took the physical
position of “presenting” — kneeling, arms clasped behind your
back, head bowed — whenever a Master came into your presence, saying
that, “the more i did it, and thought about it, and felt
its effect, the more meaningful it became.” I’ve often wondered
about this because for me (Sadie) the artificiality and theatricality of
those kind of things weighed heavily on me. Was this something that
always felt natural for you? Does it get easier?
david: “Yes, it did feel somewhat theatrical at first, but it
became more and more natural the more i did it, and i always miss
presenting for a few days after i leave Master Steve’s — though
nowadays He allows me to present standing instead of kneeling, because
if i get down on the floor, i may have trouble getting up again. The
first few times i stayed in His house, He had to remind me to get on my
knees and present when He came into a room, but these days He more often
waves me back down when i start to stand up. He’s actually gotten more
relaxed about presenting and really insists on it only at the beginning
and end of the day or when He or a slave leaves or enters the house, not
every time someone moves between rooms, which can
get nerve-wracking after a while!
“It may be ‘theatrical,’ but all rituals you’re not following
personally will seem that way. It’s literally a threshold ritual and
has classical roots. i think it’s very important for maintaining a
Master/slave headspace and not slipping into the overfamiliarity of
buddies or lovers. That doesn’t mean there isn’t any room for humor
or affection! Part of the presenting ritual is asking the Master,
‘Sir, do You wish me to continue in Your service, Sir?’ This gives
the Master an opportunity to affirm not only His control but also His
protection and ownership of the slave, which helps the slave feel secure
in his position. Master Steve often gives the reply a little spin, like
‘God help me, slaveboy, I do.’ <g>”
Sadie: You see yourself as “one
who exists in order to serve and whose greatest happiness comes from
obedience.” Considering our culture and how it teaches men to really
do quite the opposite, what was the process for you in finding out and
accepting your true nature as a slave?
david: “You’re a devil quoting my own words back at me! At the
moment that particular line sticks in my craw, because it’s such a
cliché. In any case, i don’t fit the slave stereotype very well —
but neither do any of Master Steve’s slaves or most of the successful
slaves i know. That line you quoted may suggest someone who isn’t
self-motivated at all, who just waits around for orders and is otherwise
completely passive. That sure isn’t me! i’m very goal-directed,
always thinking and planning ahead, and though i sometimes collapse in
exhaustion when the pressure lets up, i find it extremely difficult to
relax and recharge while there’s still work to be done — at least
work that i care about! i’m no paragon, and i’m as guilty as anybody
of letting boring, back-burner maintenance chores slide. But in general
i’m very demanding of myself and others, with high standards and
critical to a fault.
“In terms of sex and what turns me on, i knew very early that i
enjoyed being dominated, bound, controlled, and so forth. What i came to
realize only much later, though, was that in terms of my regular life i
also didn’t want to be the leader — i wanted to be the leader’s
sidekick, his righthand man. All of my most satisfying relationships at
work and in volunteer organizations have been when i’ve been No. 2 or
3 and have been the aide and counselor to a strong leader. So i sought
that in my personal life as well, unfortunately with less success. The
problem is that as a slave, i would be serving and obeying over a much
wider range of my life than as an employee or colleague, and it’s been
very hard for me to find a Master i could believe in and trust enough to
surrender to that completely. Three times i’ve tried, and each time
the Master has taken back the collar He gave me — though in the case
of my second Master, we remained partners and lovers for years afterward
and, in fact, are still roommates and very close friends after almost 20
years.
“So the ‘process’ of finding out and accepting my true nature as a
slave is still very much going on, and the end is by no means a foregone
conclusion. Some days i despair of ever being fulfilled in this way, and
the only thing that sustains me is Master Steve’s faith in me.”
Sadie: Some of the slaves who
post to the discussion groups seem to feel that they need a Master to
“guide” them in their lives. Personally, I feel that I am the best
judge about what is best in regard to my work, financial life, writing,
etc. because I am the most invested in my own interests. I see my
submissive nature more as a serving thing and a way to explore my deeper
spiritual self. Where do you fall on this continuum?
david: “Master Steve, my Guardian, teaches that ‘slaves can run the
universe, but they tend to make bad choices about their own lives.’
This statement pisses a lot of people off, both within and beyond the
Master/slave community, but from my experience i think He’s right for
the most part. It’s a generalization, and there are certainly
exceptions, but i think a characteristic of ‘slaveheart’ is having a
blind spot about one’s own interests that makes it particularly hard
to judge them clearly.
“For example, it is extremely common for slaves to sacrifice their own
long-term interests to an excessive degree in order to be of service to
loved ones in the short term — which can mean that in the long term,
they won’t be there for those same loved ones because they’re too
exhausted, sick, or broke to help anymore. Another example is the
tendency of many career slaves, like myself, to sacrifice our health and
emotional well-being for our jobs, burning ourselves out prematurely.
“The stereotype is of the Master as ‘slavedriver,’ cracking the
whip and forcing the slave to work harder and longer, but in reality,
Masters very often have to prevent Their slaves from overdoing
and overworking, even forcing
them to rest and recharge. This shouldn’t come as any surprise —
ordinary spouses and partners do this for each other all the time! The
difference is that a Master’s responsibility is specifically to look
at the big picture and the long range, which frees the slave to give an
all-out effort within the bounds the Master sets.
“For creative work, however, i agree with you completely — no one
else can tell me how to do mine, or should. This can be an issue in some
partnerships, i know, if inspiration strikes at odd or inconvenient
times. The Master might expect the slave to be able to write or paint or
sculpt on a regular schedule, but it doesn’t always work that way. A
good Master will learn to be adaptable and let the Muse do her thing.
<g> But this assumes that the partnership is well founded to begin
with, based on real trust, and that the slave isn’t using ‘the needs
of my art’ as an excuse to goof off.
“Finances, i think, vary depending on the individuals involved. For
me, i hate dealing with money and am much happier if my partner handles
it entirely for me. But other slaves have such strong trust issues
around money that unless they retain control over some funds of their
own, they get paranoid and frightened. A wise Master will take that into
account at the beginning of the partnership and make arrangements
accordingly.
“Finally, i agree that it would be foolish for a Master to try to
dictate a slave’s religious or spiritual beliefs or practices, but at
the same time these should be compatible with His from the start or the
relationship may be rocky. The best partnership, i think, is one where
both are on parallel spiritual paths, moving together in the same
direction, if on different levels or with different specific practices.
But i’m a real tyro spiritually, so that may be all wet! LOL! Master
Steve, in fact, has told me to take this year to look inward and find a
spiritual practice that satisfies me, rather than being as involved as i
had been in ‘outward’ activities like conferences and events. But He
did not dictate the kind of practice or even the options i should
consider.”
Sadie: You write that you are “anything but a passive, compliant,
unassertive person.” How does this part of your personality express
itself in your role as slave?
david: “That was already touched on in my answer earlier about
‘finding my true nature as a slave’ — an example of my tendency to
leap ahead and anticipate what’s required! i have very strong opinions
about things, and if i feel they’re relevant, i want to be sure my
Master is aware of them so He can consider them in making His decisions.
Earlier i mentioned my role as counselor to men i’ve served in work
positions or organizations. A slave is not necessarily less intelligent
or knowledgeable than his or her Owner — sometimes more — and it is
important to give the Owner the benefit of the slave’s thinking and
knowledge as well as his strength, manual skill, and sexual
capabilities. As long as i am respectful and accept His decisions —
whether i agree with them or not — and shut up when He tells me to, i
will try to make Him aware of my perspective.
“The other point is about being proactive rather than passive. This is
very tricky, because a slave can get into big trouble by thinking he
knows better than his Master what the Master wants. Still, if you know
He loves bock beer or blood oranges, say, i think it’s better to go
ahead and buy some when they’re in season than wait for specific
orders.”
Sadie: What do you think is the
most common misconception about the Master/slave relationship?
david: “That all Master/slave relationships are alike! The best thing
about consensual Mastery/slavery is that we can all define and refine it
however we like — sometimes it seems that’s also the worst thing,
but the potential for confusion and false advertising seems to be part
of the price of freedom. Other common misconceptions are that all
Masters and slaves are into s/m or that T/they all like leather.”
Sadie: You’ve said that Master
Steve, an experienced slave trainer, recognized that you had the
“heart of a slave.” What does this mean? What does it mean to be a
slave when you don’t have a Master? Do you believe that your inner
nature is not dependent on the dynamic between you and a Master? How do
you keep in touch with your slave nature when you are not with a Master?
david: “Those are all great questions that are hard to answer briefly!
Master Steve wrote a whole essay about ‘heart of slave’ — let me
try to paraphrase the key point: Someone who is a slave at heart feels
radically incomplete except in service to a Master. This doesn’t mean
that a slave is stupid or shiftless or incompetent, only that he or she
will feel an emptiness inside that nothing else can fill, and a
disconnection from the universe that nothing else can bridge. In a way,
you can’t be sure you’re a
slave at heart until you’ve been a slave once, because until then you
have only the emptiness, the disconnection, not the sense of completion
and connection that being in service and being owned provide. But an
experienced Master can usually tell who’s real and who’s pretending,
or confused, among a group of novices — given time anyway. slaveheart
exists whether or not a slave is in service, but it only shines and
creates joy when the right opportunity to serve and obey is provided.
Not every Master can fill the spiritual hole in every slave as easily as
our physical holes can be filled, but once slaveheart is awakened, we
tend to respond with respect, at least, to any Master Who approaches us
with respect for our slavehood.
“And once you have the experience of being the slave of a Master, even
if you’ve had the misfortune to be released after a time — whether
because it wasn’t a good match, because your Master had to relocate
and you couldn’t, or for any other reason — you’ll know what
you’re missing and what you need to have again. You can live without
it, but you can’t be happy without it. In ordinary life, a slave without a Master is
generally pretty much indistinguishable from anyone else. Some of us
make a point of trying to live as
if they were still in service, as far as possible continuing to
follow whatever protocols and daily rules applied with their former
Masters, but my feeling is that this tends to be counterproductive,
since a new Master may want you to follow quite different rules.
“The institution of Guardianship is intended precisely to help in this
situation. A Guardian Master takes on the responsibility of guiding and
protecting a slave who’s unowned until he can find a new Master.
Obviously, choosing a Guardian Master requires almost as much care and
trust as choosing a Master to own you, and it can be even harder to find
a Master willing to take on this role given that He won’t reap the
ultimate benefit. It’s not an option for everyone. But an experienced
slave who suddenly and unexpectedly loses his Master through an
accident, for instance, will probably know other Masters, friends of his
late Owner, Who’d be able and willing to take on the responsibility.
Similarly with a Master and slave W/who end T/their relationship
amicably because of a career move.
“In my own case, i already knew and loved Master Steve because of a
number of visits for training, but for various reasons W/we both felt
that i wouldn’t be suited to belong to Him. So when my third attempt
at a Master/slave relationship ended abruptly after only two months, i
asked if He would be my Guardian and guide me in any future negotiations
with potential Masters as well as help me stay focused as a slave in the
meantime. He agreed, and since then, besides wearing His token, as
described above, i also follow a small number of disciplines He requires
and report to Him each week via e-mail. It’s a long leash, but it
helps me feel connected, and at least once a year i spend some time with
Him in His home, where i serve Him along with my slavebrothers and
sisters in His family. This has now gone on for almost four years,
longer than W/we expected, and i’m no closer to a relationship with
anyone else than i was at the start — perhaps further away. So it’s
possible that in my case, not necessarily anyone else’s, Guardianship has become
a substitute for Ownership. Or it may be i just need to work out some
personal issues before i can move on — get rid of some ‘baggage’
before i can serve a new Master wholeheartedly. That’s one of the big
illusions, that slavery will solve your personal problems! To be able to
surrender and serve, you need to have your life pretty well in order
already as a free person.”
Sadie: You’ve written some
about your mixed feelings about your body, and showing it off in public.
What has been the process for you of coming to terms with this? Has your
slavery itself helped or hindered this process?
david: “LOL! Being naked most of the time is one of the best things
about slavery! It’s wonderful to be naked and to have no shame,
because that’s how you’re supposed
to be. Between slavery and the bear movement, i’ve gained a lot more
self-acceptance than i used to have — i may be fat, but i’m also
really hairy, and some men, like Master Steve, like that. He loves to
play with my chest hair. He even calls me over to show it off to guests
in the house.”
Sadie: You’ve written about the
catch-22 in that you “spent years in the struggle to liberate gay and
s/m sexuality yet wanted nothing more than to be happily enslaved.” In
what ways did your inner struggle to find yourself affect your outward
political action? What work are you most proud of?
david: “Actually, there was almost no connection between the two —
maybe that was the problem. For many years, i put GMSMA and the work we
were doing above my relationships, and i undermined two of them as a
result. Both my first and second Master got tired of coming third in my
life: first was GMSMA, and second was my job, and what was left i gave
to them — too often there wasn’t anything left.
“What i’m most proud of — and this is nothing i can take sole or
even the main credit for, only as a member of the team — is that we
got leathermen and women a place at the table in the gay and lesbian
movement. Before GMSMA and LSM (the Lesbian Sex Mafia, our sister group
that started at the same time in New York), and a few groups like us
elsewhere, leather was just one of those embarrassing fringe elements
‘respectable’ activists could ignore, if not denounce. Today, thanks
to two decades of organizing, marching, educating, demonstrating,
fundraising, meeting, and contributing, we’re recognized pillars of
the LGBT community, not only in New York but all across the U.S. and in
Canada, Europe, and elsewhere.”
Sadie: In some ways, the
Dominant/Submissive relationship has become something of a norm in the
BDSM community, with other relationships that are less common such as
the Master/slave one being sometimes seen as the exotic side of BDSM.
It’s natural for people to be concerned that giving up one’s rights
could be abusive or damaging. What kind of boundaries do you have to
protect yourself?
david: “It’s not clear to me that D/s is a ‘norm’ at all — i
think more people are s/m players whose main interest is the adrenalin
rush or the endorphin high of sceneplay, not the more subtle
psychological effects of Dominance and submission. You can overlay s/m
sceneplay with D/s elements, and people in D/s relationships can also do
s/m play, so it gets confusing! It’s very hard to make any
generalizations with confidence.
“As for ‘giving up one’s rights,’ i don’t believe you can.
Legally you can’t — no Master/slave contract is legally binding
anywhere in the ‘civilized’ world. No court would uphold it. You may
sign away all of your property rights, but you can’t sign away your
rights to your own person, so you can always, at any time, say,
‘Enough. I want out of this relationship. I’m leaving.’ Of course,
you may have to leave naked and on foot, but you can still leave.
(It’s for that reason, by the way, that my Guardian Master requires
every slave who enters His service to have a nest egg of at least
$10,000 in cash set aside in his own name, not to be touched, to start
over with if he leaves Master’s service for whatever reason.)
“Legalities and practicalities aside, i think it is part of the human
condition that we always have to make choices, and we can’t give that
up. Choosing not to choose is itself a choice — always. In every
situation, at every moment, there are alternatives, and how we act, or
decline to act, is in our hands. The alternatives may both or all be
unpleasant, but we still have to choose. If we refuse to make a choice,
then we have chosen to let someone else, or the workings of chance,
choose for us.
“Many people think of a slave as someone ‘who has no choice.’
Indeed, for many that is the main attraction of slavery, that it
promises to relieve them of the agony of having to make choices. Making
choices, and being responsible for them, is one of the hardest parts of
being an adult. Being freed of that burden and allowed to be
irresponsible again seems like a great gift.
“Maybe coercive slavery can seem like that at times for people who
have lost all hope of escape and fully accept their lot — though i
suspect this is more fantasy than history, let alone an accurate
depiction of coercive slavery as it’s practiced today in places like
the Sudan. But i know it has very little to do with consensual
slavery, which is not about having no choice but of choosing
to live in obedience. When that is clear, the problem is not one of
‘protecting the slave’s rights’ but rather of ‘supporting the
slave’s commitment,’ which has to be renewed every day — indeed,
many times a day.
“As far as boundaries, ultimately the only ones that count are the
Master’s character and values, and it takes considerable time to get
to know a man (or woman) well enough to be sure of those. Sorry to get
up on my hobbyhorse again, but it’s just like ‘safe sane
consensual’: people want slogans and formulas as a substitute for
thought, experience, and effort. All the time i hear newbie slaves
asking, ‘But how can i be sure
i can trust Him?’ And all the time i and other experienced slaves
respond, ‘you can’t be
totally sure until you know Him as well as you know your best friend.’
‘But that could take years!’
they whine. ‘Yep,’ we say, ‘exactly. Patience is a virtue, too.’
But there is one pretty safe formula: any Master Who says He won’t
wait until you get to know Him, Who expects total trust instantly, doesn’t
deserve it.”
Sadie: What are your thoughts
about slaves who give up all their rights, even the right (in theory)
not to be a slave? What have you observed about couples that approach
BDSM in this way? Where do you put yourself in that continuum?
david: “The reply to the previous question covers most of this. i
honestly haven’t observed any so-called ‘total power exchange’
couples at close hand. There seems to be a lot of claptrap written about
this online — on both sides of the argument — so i’d just as soon
not add to it. As should be clear, i don’t think it’s possible
to give up my right to walk away from a relationship. On the other hand,
doing so might be dishonorable, and honor does mean something to me. In
my three Master/slave relationships in the past, it was the Master Who
released me in each case — i never just walked away even when i was
unhappy with how things were going. Painful as it is, i believe that’s
how it should be. If the relationship has to be dissolved, preferably it
should be the Master’s doing, not at the slave’s initiative, because
that preserves the honor of both parties. What kind of a Master would
want to keep a slave who didn’t want to serve Him? There are such
Masters, undoubtedly, but more in fiction than reality — in the long
run, it’s an energy drain and totally impractical.”
Sadie: You write that, “simply
doing what a Master wants may not be enough to enable a slave to hold to
his course.” Can you explain what you mean by this?
david: “It’s the same thing Guy Baldwin was getting at, in his new
book Slavecraft, by ‘the
myth of slave training’: not all Masters are good slave trainers —
in fact, few of Them are. If They were, there would be a lot fewer two-
and three-month Master/slave relationships, let alone the two- and
three-week variety. But as it is, most Masters convey what They want
from us, but give us very little help in how to do it — i don’t mean
technique but mindset, self-discipline, ways of getting past the
emotional rough spots that are bound to occur, the times when you’re
tempted to chuck it all and do something easier, like brain surgery or
kickboxing <g>. And then there are the times when it’s all so
easy and natural, like falling off a log, that you wonder why you ever
had trouble with it! Most of the ‘inner work’ of slavery is left up
to slaves themselves, with very little or no guidance except what we can
glean from more experienced slaves. It’s great that today we’re able
to connect with each other more easily and pass on some of our
accumulated experience instead of everyone’s having to reinvent the
wheel each time.”
Sadie: It’s common for new
Dominants to think that somehow they should just “know” how to do
things, as if it will all flow naturally from their inner nature. But
you’ve written about the challenges in knowing how to get your slave
to truly surrender. What are these challenges, and how have your
partners addressed them?
david: “Bringing a slave to the point where he fully surrenders —
sometimes called ‘breaking’ him — is indeed the principal
challenge in training a slave. Probably no slave is really trained
without it. None of my Masters managed to bring me to that point, and as
a result i continued to resist Them — despite my desire to be Their
slave — until They gave up and released me. Master Steve has brought
me close, and i think He wishes to take me through that barrier, but
since i don’t live with Him full-time, He has to wait for
circumstances to be right. The last couple of visits, i was ill a lot of
the time, so He hardly worked with me at all, and the time before that,
He was ill. Breaking a slave is not something that can be entered into
casually! Both Master and slave have to be ready for it, and it takes
time, often a couple of days or more. This probably sounds like
brainwashing, but remember that it’s consensual. The slave wants
to surrender — it’s just that part of him won’t let go and needs... ah, more vigorous persuasion. <g>”
Sadie: You are an occasional top.
Considering that you seem to completely identify with being a slave,
what is topping like for you?
david: “The more i’ve identified as a slave, the less i’ve
been able to Top. i would only do it now to demonstrate something i
could do better than anyone else available, and there aren’t many
things of which that’s true — in BDSM, anyway! Abrasion is my main
specialty as a Top, but i really have no desire to do it anymore for
fun, only to show people the techniques so they
can enjoy doing it. Except for a period of about a year a long time ago,
just about every time i’ve tried to Top for pleasure, i’ve either
botched it or done such a good
job that i ended up envying my bottom and couldn’t enjoy myself!
It’s frustrating, because i could
do a much better job than a lot of the sloppy, lazy Tops out there these
days, and i’d make out better, too, because polar bears are much more
in demand as Tops than as bottoms, let alone as slaves. But it’s just
not me.”
Sadie: You’ve said that, “We
switches may have an advantage over the more dedicated exclusive Tops,
God love ’em: we’re never expected to be perfect, just adequate!”
In many ways switches have it good in that it’s easier to find
partners, and also that their more balanced experience base can make for
a better scene all around. And yet so often switches are put down for
playing both sides of the fence. What are your feelings about this?
david: “Switches are like bisexuals: no one who’s not one of them,
or close friends with one of them, really believes they’re not just
opportunists refusing to declare sides. In my case, besides having some
switch experience myself — though i’d no longer call myself a switch
— i’ve been close friends with both switches and bisexuals (not
necessarily in the same person!), so i accept that some
people genuinely don’t have a strong preference. i don’t think
it’s fair to put them down, but i also don’t buy the idea that
switches are necessarily better at what they do because
they’ve experienced and felt both sides. A good switch is better than
a mediocre Top or a mediocre bottom, but not necessarily better than a
good dedicated Top or bottom.”
Sadie: You write that, “many of
our more disappointing sessions, as bottoms, were those where the Top
seemed to be catering to our fantasies and trying to supply stimulations
he hoped we would enjoy, even though they didn’t do much for him.”
This is very much in line with many people’s feeling that the Dominant
is in fact “serving” the submissive in many ways. What do you
suggest to help Tops not fall into this trap?
david: “Dominants do serve
submissives, just as Masters serve slaves, and there’s nothing wrong
with that! It’s a mutually beneficial relationship. And so is
Top/bottom, but unless the Top is a so-called service Top, who gets off
on catering to bottom fantasies, it’s critical for many of us to know
that the Top’s primary motivation is His/Her own pleasure or desire and not ours. i
wouldn’t call it a ‘trap.’ It’s only a problem if the people
involved have other expectations.”
Sadie: Is there anything else
you’d like to share with our readers?
david: “Well, since you ask, i’d like to point out that even
though i’m a Kinsey 6 — totally homosexual — and wrote a novel
from that perspective, it seems to have quite a lot of crossover
readership. In fact, sometimes i think more women than men are reading
and enjoying it — or at least telling me they are. But then, the main
audience for fiction in the U.S., both literary and popular, has always
been female — that makes it really strange to think about countries
where women aren’t allowed to learn to read. Anyway, i’m glad that
so many women have found something of value in my writing, even though i
still wish more of my gay brothers would take the time to read my novel,
since i really wrote it for them!
“One of the more perceptive reviews it’s gotten suggested that i’d
really written a self-help manual for kinky relationships, but i
packaged it as a novel because i didn’t think people would buy it
otherwise. The truth is that an explicit self-help manual would be a
much easier sell than a novel! Americans, especially, love to buy
self-help books — and guys will buy a book like that where they’d
never buy a work of fiction on the same subject. Hey, maybe that’s
what i should do to make some real money! <g> Because i do
consider myself one of the world’s experts in why Master/slave
relationships go bad. You’d have to be an idiot not to learn something
from three ‘failures.’ And i’ve kept my ears and eyes open when
others have talked about how and why their own relationships ended.
“For the novel, i took everything i learned from my mistakes, my
partners’ mistakes, and the mistakes of others and worked it into the
story so that, maybe, a few guys could learn from our examples and get a
little further in their
relationships before flaming out. That may seem cynical, but i don’t
think many people get it right the first time. Even my Guardian has made
mistakes — He’s taken on slaves He had to release later because they
didn’t work out. The difference between a wise man and a fool isn’t
that the wise man doesn’t make mistakes but that he learns from them,
while the fool keeps making the same mistakes over and over again.
“Although Carried Away is
billed as a ‘romance,’ and it’s certainly romantic, it’s also an
entirely realistic novel. Personally, i love fantasy, but there’s not
a trace of the fantastic in this work, nothing that’s physically (or
physiologically) impossible, nothing that doesn’t fit the time and
place where it’s set (the New York City area in 1992), nothing
that’s even implausible or illogical in terms of continuity and the
time it takes for things to occur normally. If the guys stay up half the
night playing and fucking, they’re tired the next day. If someone has
a huge orgasm, he can’t come again ten minutes later. If someone
drinks several bottles of beer, he’ll need to piss. If they drive to a
restaurant in Greenwich Village, they have to hunt for a parking space.
And most of all, they work for a
living and have to take account of that in their plans. They’re
not living in Leatherland, where nothing matters except who fucks whom
or how many strokes you can take. They’re living in the all too real
world where the ‘games’ we play are considered perversions and
people die because of who and how they love — but at
the same time they’re trying to hold together a space where they
can be something else, something that feels more
real, more true, not less.
“Claims of uniqueness are always dicey, so i won’t say that Carried
Away is the only novel that tries to convey this tension between the
demands of real life and of ‘high leather’ ideals — but there are
damn few others. Practically every ‘serious’ leather novel since The
Real Thing and The Story of
Harold, whether conventionally published or available only online,
takes the fantasy route in one way or another. Either an ostensibly
realistic setting is subtly or blatantly altered to make day-to-day s/m
activities or D/s relationships more practical, or a frankly
never-neverland refuge is posited where the leather characters can live
as they wish without having to deal with social censure or even economic
pressures to conform. Now maybe someone will object that Terry’s
dungeon in Carried Away is
just such a never-neverland, and i’ll admit it’s pretty over the
top. But it’s still only a big room in a modest-size (if unusually
shaped) house in Westchester, not a private island (Exit
to Eden), nor an imaginary kingdom (the Beauty
trilogy), nor an international network of slave trainers and traders
(the Marketplace series), nor
an isolated estate way in the back country (The
Wings of Icarus). That’s not to say these other books — all of
which i’ve enjoyed, some a great deal — don’t have merit, only
that i hope Carried Away will
be recognized as having attempted to do something different and,
perhaps, more difficult.”
Sadie: Thank you for chatting
with me!
david: “It was my pleasure. Thank you for asking me!”
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
If you enjoyed this interview, read more SCENEprofiles
with BDSM personalities on Sadie's website at www.sensuoussadie.com
Sensuous Sadie is a columnist and edits
SCENEsubmissions, a free e-newsletter featuring articles and interviews
on BDSM and Spirituality. She is the founder and leader (1999 - 2001) of
Rose & Thorn, Vermont's first BDSM group. Comments, compliments and
complaints, as well as requests for reprinting can be addressed to her
at SensuousSadie@aol.com
or visit her website at www.sensuoussadie.com. Sadie believes the universe is abundant, and that sharing information
freely is part of this abundance, so she allows reprints of her writing
in most venues.
Copyright 2003 Sadie Sez Publications
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