Part I
“I’m a Sub not a Slave”
Two smartly-dressed men, Michael in Stefan, both in their mid-thirties, and well matched in their looks and physiques, get out of the taxi in front of Michael’s downtown apartment block. If you’d seen them in the restaurant where they’d met a few hours earlier, you’d guess correctly that this was their first real-life date, but one prepared over several weeks of online chats. Michael’s apartment is exactly what you’d expect from a single urban gay professional: Comfortable and smart, with a few quirky touches that interest rather than shock or amuse.
Stefan is a relatively new arrival in the country, where he combines a high-powered job with a university teaching post. Although European by birth and education, Stefan speaks flawless English. “Polished” was the word that Michael thought when he met Stefan for the first time in the restaurant. For his part, Stefan was pleased to see that Michael has the understated confidence and masculinity that came through in their online chats. The two men’s body language and behavior so far would lead most people to expect that what will follow will be a manly, vanilla sexual encounter, during which Stefan, who is an inch taller and broader, will probably take the lead. Most people would be wrong, however, as what is about to happen is a sub-dom role play scene.
Let’s scroll back three weeks to the evening when Michael had been idling going through the profiles on a fetish personals’ site when the picture of a muscular torso had caught his eye. He opened the profile, checking out the other pictures, which though all headless, showed more of the body and the bulging crotches of several pair of underwear, and scanned the age, stats, and preferred role (bottom), before he read the profile text. He found the text confusing, because half of it and the pics seemed to belong to a mainstream vanilla profile, and the other half, though it did mention several gay BDSM interests, did so in the negative: “I am not a slave, into heavy bondage and discipline, or humiliation.” It finished off with, “But I’m happy to explore with a 100% top man who is looking for a 100% bottom like me.” The pics and 100% bottom had made Michael’s cock twitch, but he was a little puzzled by the rest and unsure how to phrase his initial message. Michael did not call himself a master but a dom-top. He owned several leather and rubber outfits, but that was party rather than play wear. Dressing for sex usually meant wearing a jockstrap that showed off his physique. His small gear collection filled a sports bag in the bottom of his bedroom closet. Lately, he’d been wondering if he shouldn’t invest in more, as many of the subs he met expected a dom to have a lot more gear.
Michael stared at the empty white message box on the screen. He could focus on the vanilla half of the profile, but this was a fetish site, and maybe the guy was a novice and hadn’t really worked out what he wanted. There were a lot of novices on this site, but usually they were guys in their late teens and early twenties. In the end, he decided to list of his gay BDSM interests, accompanied by a couple of shots of himself in a jock. It was fetish but not so hardcore that it would scare off a novice. Michael was surprised when the sub replied almost immediately. The message was basically thanks but no thanks, but without shutting down the conversation, so maybe, no thanks for this particular approach, but what else can you offer me? Still confused but now intrigued, he decided to take the easy way out and ask the sub what he wanted.
Stefan had been upfront about what he wanted and pretty emphatic about what he didn’t. Unlike most subs who played first and then got to know the dom, Stefan stressed that he needed to establish a connection with the dom before playing. He realized this put off a lot of doms, but that wasn’t a problem for him because he preferred to wait for the right guy. This statement sounded quite romantic given the context, but it was counterbalanced by a realistic evaluation of the gay BDSM scene, its participants, and practices. Stefan had obviously made the effort to speak and maybe meet other doms, and realized that he didn’t fit the mold of the typical gay BDSM sub or slave. For his part, Michael had never really worked out what the difference was between a sub or slave––it seemed best to discover the definition of the person you were planning to meet and use that as a basis for the session.
Stefan was sure he was not a slave, but when he defined what he wanted as a sub, Michael thought the words he was using were different but their substance wasn’t that different from what a lot of slaves said they wanted. The real difference was that Stefan had no interest in NSA meets and that him agreeing to sub-dom and sex play were dependent on first establishing a friendship with the dom. They’d set a date and place for a “date"––Michael’s first for a long while––and agreed a no-hard-feelings clause, should there be no chemistry. The evening, however, had gone much better than expected for both of them. And now, their misgivings forgotten and their inhibitions dulled by an evening of increasing intimacy and alcohol, they are sitting side by side on Michael’s sofa.
There is always an uneasy period of transition between the type of social interaction the two men have shared and the scene they are about to play out. Stefan excuses himself just as any guest would when going to the bathroom, but he heads for Michael’s bedroom. Michael waits on the sofa sipping his drink wondering if the scene is going to work. At the restaurant, Stefan had taken the lead in most matters without even thinking. If he’d met him at the gym or in a bar, he wouldn’t have guessed that Stefan was a bottom let alone a sub.
Five minutes later, Stefan emerges from the bedroom stripped down to the jockstrap that he’d worn under his clothes at the restaurant. The body is, if anything, better in real life than in the profile pictures, but what is most striking about Stefan is the transformation in his body language. If it had been confident and expansive before, it is now diffident and reserved. He walks across the room like a junior employee who’s been summoned to the boss’ office to be told off for some mistake. Michael is impressed by the transformation, realizing that Stefan is playing the submissive role much more convincingly than many of the slaves he’s played with. He finds it easy to give him orders. The sight of the tall, muscular man is all the more exciting because his submissiveness has not diminished his masculinity and physical presence.
Michael immediately recognizes the same contradiction that he had seen in Stefan’s ad. Michael had met slaves who abased themselves so much they stopped being human and made themselves into objects that the master could use as he chose––sometimes literally. Michael thought of them as “doormats”––guys who were happy to submit to anything the dom wanted. Michael didn’t want to fight for what he wanted, but he did want to sub to show some resistance and self-respect, so that his submission meant something. Stefan is submissive but he very far from making himself into an object to be used: His submission is conditional on the dom’s affection and respect. It is submission from a position of strength and confidence.
The only equipment they use is a pair of nylon and Velcro wrist restraints someone had given Michael as a joke birthday. But with Stefan, they fit his idea of light bondage. The only discipline Michael uses and that Stefan has allowed are light slaps and some manhandling. As the scene progresses toward its inevitable climax when Michael will claim Stefan’s ass on the comfortable double bed in Michael’s bedroom, the two men relax into their roles and begin to test each other playfully. Michael carefully pushes Stefan, and he allows Stefan to push back, making sure that his responses remain within Stefan’s comfort zone. Although mild in terms of bondage and discipline, the scene has an unusual emotional intensity.
Looking back on it the next day, Michael realizes that with most subs, the scene begins when play starts, but with Stefan it had started a soon as he’d sent a message to his profile. All through their online chats, through their dinner date, Stefan was a sub who’d needed to be made to take the next step by a more dominant man. When Stefan had come out of the bedroom in his jock, he’d already submitted. Michael had passed Stefan’s dominance test, so he didn’t need to tie him up or flog him to make him submit any further. He only had to claim what was his already.
Part II
Submission Impossible
If you ask me to describe how I want a sub to behave during a session, my answer might sound confused and contradictory: I want a guy who will submit and be obedient, but I don’t want a human doormat who’ll roll over and obey every order I give without a murmur. I want someone feisty, with spirit and self-respect, who will put up some resistance and challenge me to make him submit. On the other hand, I don’t want him to be so feisty and resistant that I’ll have to work too hard to make him submit. I certainly don’t want to get in a physical contest with a guy who might be a lot younger, taller, and stronger than me. He has to resist and disobey, but within certain limits. So, what I want from a slave or sub, like a lot of gay BDSM, can appear quite contradictory. So what do the words “master” and “slave,” “sub” and “dom” mean in a culture founded on equality and consent?
First off, there is no genuine submission in contemporary gay BDSM, any more than there is real slavery––in the sense of one person “owning” another (“SM Is for Slave and Master,” February 20, 2017)––because, just as there cannot be real slavery if the slave consents to it, there cannot be real submission with consent. What you have is simulated slavery and submission––a role play that both engage in because that’s how they find sexual gratification. But no one is forced against their will to do anything they don’t want or don’t in some way find a turnon.
If it were otherwise, we risk entering into the realms of domestic violence, abuse, and assault. A little while back, I spoke to a sub in his early twenties who was looking for a full-time live-in position with a master. He described the kind of master he wanted and how he would treat him, and, on the surface, it sounded all fairly standard gay sub-dom, dad-son role play. He wanted his master-dad to be in charge: tell him what to wear, humiliate him in public, oversee his workouts to get him into shape, punish him if he fell short of expectations, and fuck him whenever he wanted to without asking permission. And then, I started to notice things that didn’t quit fit. He complained that all the fetish doms he’d met asked him for his consent before they fucked him. This led him to say that they weren’t ‘real doms’ and that they were just into "role-play,” meaning it disparagingly.
I asked him about his former dom-dad and whether it had been him who’d taught him what it was to be a sub-son. “He was my boyfriend for three years,” he replied. “He wasn’t a fetish dom or master like the ones on the fetish sites?” I asked. The sub confirmed that he wasn’t. He was extremely dominant and controlling, and he imposed strict punishments for any mistake or if the sub broke one of the complicated behavior rules the master imposed. As he spoke, I realized that what had begun as consensual sub-dom, dad-son role play had morphed into an abusive, coercive relationship with strict punishments and regular public humiliations.
But as the sub-son had been an eighteen-year-old novice when he’d met his fifty-something dom-dad, he thought that this was what all sub-dom play was like. He was puzzled because he what he’d found on the fetish scene felt so different. “How did the relationship end?” I asked. “One time, he went away on a business trip, and while he was away I did something wrong. When he came back, I knew that he was going to punish me real bad, so I stayed away for a couple of weeks. When I wanted to go back, he told me he didn’t want me anymore.” The poor sap blamed himself for the breakup because he had not taken his punishment. I tried to explain to him that what he’d lived through was not sub-dom or dad-son role play, but an abusive, coercive relationship that many people would think of as domestic violence.
The guy was ‘real’ OK, he was a real nutcase. But no matter how I tried to persuade him that the only way to go was role play, he kept coming back finding someone “real.” “If only he’d stuck to the rules,” the sub said wistfully about the breakup with his ex. Meaning that as long as the reasons for which he was punished made some kind of sense within the rules they had established, and the punishments themselves were not too severe, he’d have been happy to continue with the relationship. But the dom was clearly not role playing: When he got angry, he was really angry, and he lashed out at the sub. He was out of control, and even the sub recognized that he’d become dangerous. Fortunately, the guy had not taken him back, realizing either consciously or subconsciously that the sub-son had grown up during their three years together, and that he had lost the absolute control that the sub-son had been happy to give him when they’d first met.
Part III
Role Play 101
When I ask some novice players if they are into role play, they sometimes reply, “Oh, no. I couldn’t possibly do that. I wouldn’t be any good at it.” As if I were asking to perform a leading role in a Broadway show. As soon as you decide that you’re a dom or sub, you’ve started role playing. Humans are extremely complex and their personas cannot be defined by the narrow labels of sub or dom, master or slave, dad or son, to name three of the most popular role plays in gay BDSM.
If we go back the story of Stefan and Michael, Stefan was a sub during his session with Michael, but in every other area of life, he was clearly a confident, strong alpha male––most probably a control freak. We can speculate why he wanted or needed to relinquish that part of himself even for short periods of time, but in my experience, he is not that unusual––the control-freak alpha male who consents to sub but in very controlled circumstances with a dom who is not going to abuse or betray his trust. Ultimately, they remain in control. Stefan might be on his knees licking Michael’s feet or sucking his cock, but if Michael were foolish enough to break any of their agreed limits, Stefan would instantly revert to type and end the session.
Popular Role Plays
Essentially, gay BDSM role play is a dramatic performance whose goal is to get the participants horny and off, if possible. You could compare it to a stage play or a TV drama, but one that is written as the participants play it out. Role playing can be extremely simple, as in one person taking on the dom role and the other the sub role, or extremely elaborate, with each person playing a character who has a complex backstory, interacting in a predetermined scenario, in a session featuring sets, props, and costumes. The choice of characters and settings is only limited by the imagination and also, one must be honest, by the acting ability of the participants. All role plays, simple or elaborate, have one commonality: They have a built-in power imbalance between the players, though this can be played out in many different ways, including role reversals if the participants are versatile.
There are no rules about you should role play, but here are a few guidelines that you might find helpful.1. Always stay in character, and try to imagine how your character would react to the situation. For example, if the sub is playing a cocky straight jock who is being forced to submit against his will, he shouldn’t, as one play sub did with me, immediately drop to his knees when ordered to suck coach’s dick.2. I try to make role play as close to reality as possible so that the storyline, like the plot of a movie, TV show, or stage play, makes sense, and the characters know how they should react and behave.3. If you start cracking up, or it’s not working for one or both of you, just give up. Role play can be fun and is a good way to structure a session, but you can have just as much fun with the tried-and-tested sub-dom formula.
Sub-dom
This is so fundamental to gay BDSM that many players wouldn’t even acknowledge it as a role play in its own right. But as I pointed out above, no one’s personality can be reduced to the labels sub or dom, so in describing yourself as a sub or dom, you’re already role playing.
Master-slave
Again, so basic that it’s often unacknowledged as a role play. Historical slavery in antiquity or the ante-bellum
South can be mined to create a structured narrative for a session that might otherwise be a random series of activities.
For example, I am a wealthy Roman citizen who wants a new slave. I go to the slave market where a young barbarian takes my fancy. I inspect him, and despite his attempts to prevent me, I violate his personal bodily space. After buying him, I have to train him to obey and satisfy my every sexual whim. He resists but in the end, submits. The curtain falls on the master fucking his now submissive sex slave. This role play presupposes that the master ‘owns’ the slave in the same way as he might own an animal or an inanimate object. There is no ambiguity in the roles. The master is the acknowledged superior and he can use any means he wishes to make the slave submit.
Dad-son
When I reached the age when younger subs started to ask me if I was into dad-son role play, I was initially fairly reluctant to play the role, or let anyone call me “Dad.” The reason being that my relationship with my father had been far from ideal, and he was the last person with whom I’d ever think of engaging in any erotic or sexual activity. With time, I have managed to go beyond my less-than-ideal experience of fatherhood, and I am happy to play dad to a younger son, though I’m definitely more a strict 1950s dad with a sawhorse and a selection of CP instruments in his woodshed. But the role play is pretty flexible, as dad can be anything from a strict disciplinarian to an indulgent father who introduces his son to the pleasures of man-to-man action.
Coach-jock, teacher-student
Like dad-son, these scenarios give the characters quite a lot of choice in the type of activity that will feature in a session. Is it coach paddling his star quarterback for being caught drinking, or the pervy class teacher luring his student to his home to take advantage of him?
Cop-delinquent, warden-prisoner
The power imbalance between the participants in these role plays is more pronounced than in dad-son or coach-jock, and so they lend themselves to harder role play. Where dad might persuade or cajole his son into a sexual act, a cop might rape the delinquent he’s just arrested. And instead of coach paddling his unruly jock, the warden might flog or bullwhip his rebellious prisoner to discipline him.
POW interrogation
One of my most successful role plays in recent years was a POW scene that was extremely simple in terms of the setting and props. We were not in some subterranean bunker-like dungeon but in my living room, with the lights dimmed, and the only thing that identified the sub as a POW was a pair of fatigue pants that he wore commando. Despite these shortcomings, something clicked in his head, and for a moment he really believed he was a POW being interrogated. He was standing untied, legs apart, hands at the back of his head, following orders and receiving the odd whack in the nuts, when he suddenly cried out while grabbing his crotch. When he was able to speak again, he told me he’d cum. I was doubly surprised because this was his first role-play experience, and he’d always resisted doing any role play before because he was sure it wouldn’t work. Sadly, he proved himself right, because on every subsequent occasion we tried, any role play we tried didn’t work anywhere near as well.
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