Love in Dark Settings

"Working as a servant was as much a rite of passage for young people in the late Middle Ages and early modern era as going off to college is today. In contrast with other societies around the world, where servants were usually a class of people doomed to servitude for their entire lives, in northwestern Europe large numbers of young people passed through a phase of service before forming their own households and working their own lands or trades. In northern Europe, anywhere between one-third and one-half of all young people put in time as servants in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries. In the early 1700s, according to one study, 60 percent of all English youths aged fifteen to twenty-four worked as servants at some point in their lives."

--Stephanie Coontz: Marriage, a History.

Topics in this post: military history, orders, leather history, service, protocol, schedules, family hierarchy, religious hierarchy, business hierarchy, support networks for hierarchy.

Background to my Mentoring Life entries (please read this first if you haven't done so already).

*** 14 March 2008

I spent three-quarters of an hour tonight listening to my apprentice describe the evolution in the American military over the past two hundred years, with him explaining to me the distinction between the attitudes of career military families, draftees, and volunteers, with an appendix on the distinction between American drafts and British press-gangs, which, it turns out, were related to British feudal customs that allowed later aristocrats to simply tell the estate men who were under the control, "You're joining the military."

Thank goodness, the conversation evolved (god knows how) into a discussion of the separation of church and state in the American branch of the Anglican Church at the time of the American Revolution, a subject that I actually knew something about. Sometimes I wonder which of us should actually be the mentor.

*** 15 March 2008

Jo/e (after two lengthy e-mails and an hour into an equally lengthy discussion): ". . . It's not that I mind you offering advice to me about such matters, Sir. It's just that the leathermen here assume that you're not just advising me - they assume that I have to ask your permission."

Me: "Well, you have to understand that there's a not great deal of distinction in my mind between me advising you and me ordering you. Nearly all of my orders to you come in the form of advice."

Jo/e: "Yes, Sir, and I understand that, it's just that . . . well . . ."

Me: "You don't like the idea of having to ask my permission on such matters."

Jo/e: "Well . . . you see . . . it would actually be easier for me in a way if I were to seek your permission, but I know that this is probably something you don't want to involve yourself in . . ."

(*Cue Dusk falling into helpless laughter.*)

I told him that we should agree not to second-guess each other in the future. This is hardly the first time he has been saying, "No, no, no, I don't want you to give me orders" (while secretly wanting me to give him orders), and I've been saying, "No, no, no, I don't want to give you orders" (while secretly wanting to give him orders).

"I don't think," he said when we'd finally controlled our laughter, "that there are many leather porn stories where the characters stand around saying to each other, 'I really don't want to get involved with this.'"

The "this" in question was his dating life (if I may put it in that fashion), where I didn't want to make his decisions for him but did want to have a chance to get to know the people he was thinking of partnering with and to question him about the various factors he was using to make his decisions as to whether to enter into the relationships. The final decisions, as I made clear to him, were his; where the "orders" part came into it was that I didn't want this to be a hit-and-miss proposition, with him sometimes involving me in his decision-making process and sometimes not doing so. I wanted his consultation with me to be invariable.

We both wanted the same thing, as it turned out. But I'd thought that he didn't want my help at all. And he'd thought that I didn't want to involve myself in this and was only doing so out of a sense of duty to him . . .

We worked it out eventually. But I think he's right that this sort of misunderstanding is likely to arise frequently with us, because I'm continually worried about taking over his life too much, and he's continually worried that he's demanding too much that I take leadership over him.

Lest I sound as though this were a simple case of clearing up a misunderstanding, it wasn't. There were important reasons why we were worried that me involving myself in supervising his dating life could cause problems for both of us. We both have "trigger" issues to deal with; he has had bad relationships in the past that cause him to have trust issues with me, while his dating life takes him into territories that I find difficult to discuss, because I have very strong interior barriers against entering such territories myself.

But to a large extent our problems arise from both of us being afraid to admit to what we want. We're both dealing with what I have to call Vanilla Guilt - the inner convinction that for us to want to order or be ordered is self-centered and an imposition on the other person. And what makes it so damnably difficult to overcome that guilt is that it would be wrong for me to give him orders in certain areas of his life, and it would be wrong for him to require me to give him orders in certain areas of his life. Yet neither of us really knows for certain where those boundaries lie.

I told him that, our relationship being the sort it is - no contracts, no lists of rules, just us figuring out things as they come - we're bound to have to have discussions now and then to determine where our boundaries lie. And he said that some of those discussions are bound to be renegotiations, because neither of us is where we were when we first discussed these issues last August.

We've come a long way from when he was worried that I'd be a dictator over him, and I was convinced that I had no qualifications to supervise his life in any areas other than writing and protocol.

*** 19 March 2008

Publishing news: Jack Fritscher has posted online the galleys of his history of Drummer, the classic leather magazine. Mr. Fritscher was editor-in-chief of the magazine in the midst of its golden period, in the late 1970s, so the contents of this book ought to be a treat.

*** 22 March 2008

My apprentice went to a pansexual demo last night and found himself facing a sign that said: "All meals will be potluck."

He promptly went off and bought Ho Hos.

(If you've read my story "Spontaneous," you'll get the joke.)

"I'm afraid there wasn't time to make Jell-O, Sir . . ."

*** 25 March 2008

". . . and I'm sewing a dress for Scott's Sir," my apprentice said.

"Excuse me?" I said, thinking that if I inserted this conversation into a leather story, nobody would believe it.

"For his drag routine," my apprentice patiently explained.

Ah. All was revealed. But I got my revenge for that moment of uncertainty, later in the conversation. "I want you to do something for me," I said.

"Yes, Sir?"

"It'll be difficult for you, but I believe that you're up to the challenge."

"Yes, Sir." (Sounding a little more tentative now.)

"I'm sure you be able to make it through this."

"Yes, Sir." (The voice was fainter now.)

"I want you to read smut for me."

(A long silence as my apprentice tried to make sense of what I'd said.)

I have the 2008 issues of True Tales coming up, and while I have a few stories lined up, I don't have enough. So - since I had a first reader conveniently at hand - I told my apprentice to trot over to the appropriate category of the erotic stories section of Men on the Net (prison stories, that being the theme for this year's issues) and see whether he could turn anything up. He has a tendency to put off research assignments; somehow I have the feeling he won't delay work on this one.

*** 27 March 2008

"So what have you been doing today?" I asked my apprentice.

"Well, I've spent much of the day reading prisonfic--"

He couldn't understand why I was laughing. When I finally caught my breath, I said, "I figured you'd start early on that assignment."

"Oh, I started reading them last night, Sir--" Again he had to break off because I was laughing so hard.

Actually, it turned out I was misjudging him. I found that he isn't fond of prison stories, so his eagerness really came from a desire to provide prompt service to me.

Later in the conversation, I complimented him on volunteering to help out a friend. He responded, "Yeah, well . . ."

I've heard the response "Yeah, well," several times from him recently, as well as "Yeah, okay," and other variations on this theme. I've only called him once on it (when I had just given him a direct order; those come so rarely that he really does need to respond "Yes, Sir" or "No, Sir" in such circumstances, so that I can know that he understands he has received an order). Partly I haven't said much because he usually inserts a "Sir" within the next sentence or two, but mainly it's because I suspect that his small lapses into egalitarian talk are my own fault. My apprentice tends to carry the weight for keeping our conversations linguistically hierarchical, part of an overall problem I'm having in figuring out how to conduct protocol over the phone.

These are the sorts of times when I'm intensely aware of the fact that I'm carrying out a hierarchical relationship without a proper societal support system. My apprentice has at least a little assistance - his leather club, which practices protocol - and that no doubt helps him in maintaining his end of matters. But I had contact with the leather community . . . three times last year, was it? I never have contact with any other hierarchical society, and what little work experience I've had in the past hasn't prepared me for conducting a relationship with formal protocol. At all of the businesses I worked at, there was no protocol at all to distinguish between the bosses and the employees. If it hadn't been for the fact that I was being issued orders, I would have sworn that we were fellow comrades in a cooperative.

One would think that, if I learned hierarchical protocol anywhere, it would be with my parents. I did grow up in a generation which routinely addressed one's parents by titles ("Mother" and "Daddy," in my case) rather than by first names, and of course they issued orders I had to obey, but that's as far as it went in my family. Deferential etiquette toward one's elders - such as rising when they enter the room - is something I learned from reading Miss Manners in college, and I've never quite had the nerve to practice it with my parents (though darn it, it's becoming increasingly hard not to say "sir" to my father).

The one place where I was exposed to protocol - deeply hierarchical protocol - was in church. Alas, that protocol ended at the sanctuary door. I do remember asking my parish priest, "How do I address our bishop?" (I forget my priest's answer, except that he told me I didn't have to say, "My lord," the way I could if the Episcopal Church was still part of the Church of England.) But that, and calling the priests Father So-and-so, was the only opportunity I was given to exercise ecclesiastical protocol outside of a church service.

So I have to think things up from scratch with my apprentice, or else grub through Victorian etiquette books or Renaissance courtesy literature, searching for hints of precedents to modern situations. Whereas, if I were living in a hierarchical society, I would have learned how to address one's apprentice on the phone, in the same manner that I was taught how to address my grandmother on the phone. It would come naturally to me, in the same manner as saying "please" and "thank you" comes naturally to me.

*** 28 March 2008

My apprentice, with his usual ability to catch subtleties, picked up on the fact that my amusement at his tackling the prison-story assignment so quickly reflected the fact that he wasn't getting other assignments done as quickly as I'd have liked. Concerned, he called me up to check about this.

I felt rather embarrassed, while discussing this with him, by the fact that it was so much easier for me to remember the times he had failed to complete assignments, or had turned them in late, than it was for me to remember the doubtless legion number of times that he has done things quickly for me. I really must stop this habit of taking for granted his good service.

*** 1 April 2008

A family crisis has arisen for my apprentice, and he has had to take charge of the situation. It's rather amusing for me to see him - a person who is struggling to keep his own schedule in order - take charge of another person's schedule. Because, of course, that's exactly what happened when I took charge of his schedule. But I'm also very proud of him for accepting responsibility that he couldn't have expected to be loaded down with, and doing so without a word of complaint.

He told me today that his views on schedule-keeping have altered: that he used to fear schedules as rigid, set pieces that he'd have to adhere to for the rest of his life. Now he regards schedules as more fluid than he did in the past.

*** 2 April 2008

The cover story of the April issue of Wired Magazine, "How Apple Got Everything Right By Doing Everything Wrong," has some interesting comparisons of egalitarian management ("In the 1990s, Intel's executives expressed solidarity with the engineers by renouncing their swanky corner offices in favor of standard-issue cubicles") versus hierarchical management ("Because Jobs' approval is so hard to win, Apple staffers labor tirelessly to please him").

Unfortunately, because the article is focussed on Steve Jobs, it only talks about a particular type of hierarchical management style, which a couple of observers aptly describe as "being an asshole." The egalitarian management style, on the other hand, is described as "touchy-feely."

Oh, dear. Where do we touchy-feely hierarchical managers hang out?

*** 4 April 2008

"You poor, poor boy," I said.

A silence, and then, "Why do you say that, Sir?"

"I feel as though I've put you through torture. Those stories you sent me were the cream of the crop?"

I was referring, of course, to the four prison stories my apprentice had sent me from Men on the Net, after he had read and rejected the other fifty-six as unsuitable for me to recommend at True Tales.

He laughed and replied, "Yes, Sir."

"I'm sending you to a much nicer place this time," I promised him, and told him to trot over to Gay Authors and see what he could find in the archive there. I've taken part in discussions at that site's forum, and there are some very dedicated writers there, so hopefully the archive's contents will reflect that.

"Never let it be said," I concluded, "that you aren't willing to suffer for your mentor."

I feel horrible about having made him wade through all that dreck. I only pointed him to Men on the Net because (unlike any other gay porn archive I know of) it had a section for prison stories; I hadn't actually read any of the stories there. I figured that Men on the Net couldn't be worse than Nifty, which I knew he had browsed through in the past for fun.

I was wrong. Even at Nifty (which isn't exactly the literary heights of the Web), I'm usually able to find a few good stories if I browse through as many tales as my apprentice did at Men on the Net. And by "good," I mean good enough to be published. There are a few jewels at Nifty, scattered amidst the dross. But apparently Men on the Net is all dross. I'm sorry I didn't know that before I sent my apprentice over there. It really was awfully polite of him to hold back his screams of literary agony. Next time, when he says, "I'm not finding much so far," I'll know that he actually means, "No-o-o! I'm in torment!"