Daily life: Novel research and DS
"Only on [the Erotic Romance Writers Forum] would someone have an 'immediate need' for text on fisting."
--Cupnjava, responding a couple of years ago to one of my research requests.
For newcomers: Background to my writing entries | Background to my mentoring entries | Background to my simplicity entries | Background to my home entries.
How I reply to comments at this blog.
*** 22 August 2009. Mentoring: Two exchanges with my apprentice.
"I just want to let you know, Sir, that you're evil."
"Oh? What have I done now?"
"I had just gotten out of the shower, and I saw that you'd sent me a link to your blog, so I sat down and read the blog entry, and it was all about you saying that I'm in service to my art. And I thought, 'Oh. I guess this means I have to go work on my fabric art today.'"
o--o--o
"So I'm evil."
"Well, yes, Sir, but in a kind and well-meaning way."
"Isn't that the definition of a dom?"
*** 24 August 2009. Writing: Prison City research: The oyster wars.
I've finished reading John R. Wennersten's "The Oyster Wars of Chesapeake Bay." Man, does he make the turn-of-the-century Chesapeake sound like the Wild West.
"Shortly after midnight on January 28, 1871, a small boat left St. Michaels, staying close to the shore to avoid being silhouetted on the open water. As the [oyster] pirates eased their way through the ice cakes and approached the steamer they discovered only one man on duty; they quickly knocked him unconscious with a culling hammer. When they arrived at Davidson's cabin they discovered that the door was locked, and as they struggled with it, they awakened the captain. With hardly a moment to lose, Davidson [the head of the naval police force that arrested men who broke the oyster laws] leaped out of bed, grabbed his Colt revolver, and fired two shots through the door. The pirates scrambled desperately back to their skiff and were rowing wildly for the shore when Davidson fixed them in the sight of his rifle. After a short burst of fire over their heads, the oystermen surrendered and Davidson's men brought the criminals back to the Leila in shackles. While Davidson had foiled Gus Rice's plan and had arrested several of his men, this would not be the last time that the oyster police would have to fight the wily oyster pirate. Later that day in St. Michaels, Davidson wearily confessed to a state fisheries inspector that when he first went to sea he never dreamed that anyone would try to kill him over an oyster."
I especially liked the bit about the culling hammer; that's an instrument used to open oysters. The whole book is full of marvellous material. I'm all primed now to visit Calvert County in Southern Maryland, which is the place that I'm basing the setting of Master and Servant 1: The Abolitionist upon.
At some point or another in my trip preparations, I found myself saying, "Gee, I wish I'd memorized the names of all the Maryland counties, the way my fourth-grade teacher tried to persuade me to do." (Maybe if he'd done something more than present me with a list of county names to memorize, I would have found the exercise more exciting.) My decision to base the setting of the Turn-of-the-Century Toughs series on the northeastern seaboard of the U.S. - and especially on the region around Washington, D.C. - is causing me to pore non-stop over local maps. Tonight, comparing a 1910 topography map of the southern tip of Calvert County with a modern map, I discovered with delight that a certain road on the 1910 map is echoed by a road on the modern map, though the modern road is well-hidden within the maze of streets that now exist in that area.
Doug says we should be able to visit Southern Maryland before Labor Day. (For those of you who don't know, Southern Maryland is just south of where I live. Doug used to bike there, back in the days when he was doing lots of biking.) I also need to get over to the University of Maryland's main library a couple more times in order to do some more Prison City research, as well as take one more trip to the Maryland Room of Hyattsville Library, the main branch of my county's library system. Maybe the Maryland Room at the Pratt Library in Baltimore too. At the end of September, I'll be visiting Annapolis to attend my college homecoming; I plan to nip over to the Annapolis Maritime Museum while I'm there. In September/October, I'll be taking another trip or two to Dorchester County (across the Chesapeake Bay, east of Calvert County), which is where Master and Servant 3: Unmarked and three of the stories in volume two of Prison City are set. And I think I might be able to persuade Doug to take a separate visit to St. Mary's County (immediately west of Calvert County), where I need to do a bit of research. Finally, over the winter, I'll continue reading early-twentieth-century boarding-school books.
So hopefully, by the end of this winter, I'll have finished all of the Chesapeake and boarding-school portions of my Prison City research. Cross my fingers, over the winter I'd like to be able to finish the five novellas that take place in the Second and Third Landsteads, the bay-fronting territories in my series. At the very least, I should be able to get the first two finished, which will allow me to publish "Master and Servant" next year.
*** 26 August 2009. Reading: Recommendation of Syd McGinley's The Complete Dr. Fell, Volume 1: Lost.
Syd McGinley: The Complete Dr. Fell, Volume 1: Lost. (Author's Website. Protagonist's Website, including online excerpts from the Dr. Fell stories.) Male homoerotic fiction, male friendship fiction, leather fiction, contemporary fiction, erotic fiction, spirituality themes. ¶ Fiction books (collecting stories originally published as fiction e-books). ¶ On-screen sex. On-screen violence. ¶ Archive of my reviews.
A group of rich masters swap their leatherboys back and forth with cheerful abandon. Then one master meets an arrogant boy who needs to be taken down a few knotches.
I have to admit that this trope - which was first popularized in the late 1970s through Mr. Benson, by John Preston, who in turn stole much of his material from earlier writers - is not my favorite BDSM storyline. Maybe it's because I'm such a realist that I expect the masters to be arguing over which master's protocol the boys should follow.
Syd McGinley, though, has done what I would have thought impossible: The Complete Dr. Fell, Volume 1: Lost is a realistic version of this trope. It's not only realistic, but it retains Preston's admirable mixture of humor and pathos.
McGinley's novel actually reminds me more closely of Preston's I Once Had a Master, which Preston based on episodes in his own life. Unlike Mr. Benson, which nobody could describe as realistic (with the possible exception of the chapter set in the Mineshaft bar), I Once Had a Master sought to mold porn fantasy into something that could pass as literary fiction. McGinley has done the same. Amidst all the unlikely erotic passages - a cock ring made of hollies? - the novel addresses such topics as domestic abuse, immigration laws, illiteracy, and Robert's Rules of Order. "Jesus, he's spent too long in corporate land," the narrator says of another character. "I mean, it is important to discuss who is having what mark put on which boy, but do we really need a fucking agenda?"
In addition, to my very great relief, the dominant who narrates the story is not rich.
Dr. John Fell is an engaging protagonist: a scholarly curmudgeon who has a soft spot for abused and ill-trained leatherboys. I can't say that I agree with every decision he makes, not to mention his propensity for thrashing bare flesh with wild plants. (I winced during those passages, since I'm allergic to just about everything I touch in my garden.) But that's entirely the point: this is no Mr. Benson, no idealization of an infallible master. Instead, Dr. Fell is struggling with a personal demon: an inability to move beyond a past tragedy, which inhibits his relations with others.
Fortunately, he is surrounded by a loving and supportive community. (Dr. Fell describe this as a D/s group, though it reads to me as M/s, since all of the group's boys are owned and appear to have little say on how their lives are led.) Many BDSM stories zero in on a sexual pairing, leaving the reader with the impression that there's a solid wall between BDSM partners and the rest of the world. McGinley's approach is refreshingly different, presenting a network of BDSM relationships, and even hinting at what is taking place in the vanilla world. (The passage where Dr. Fell doms his students during a writing exercise is particularly amusing.)
Although Dr. Fell frequents a leather bar (how he got past the doorman before he bought himself a leather jacket is left an unanswered question), there's not much gay leather culture in the novel. On the other hand, there's a strong enough gay atmosphere that one doesn't feel that McGinley has stolen the plotline from yaoi manga. (In a tongue-in-cheek sequence, McGinley portrays a boy as harboring such manga.) Although the characters - in another realistic touch - range from bear to effeminate, Dr. Fell himself is very much a product of masculine culture: "We're saved from having to do awkward macho congratulations," he reports at one point. Thanks to the first-person narration, we get to witness his inner turmoil, but only occasionally are the other characters granted a glimpse of what lies behind his forbidding countenance.
The novel begins a bit awkwardly, with Dr. Fell subduing a recalcitrant submissive by sheer force and, it might be added, no condom. (The characters' attitudes toward condomless anal sex are frustratingly inconsistent; at one point, a boy prepares contributions for an AIDS foundation mere hours before barebacking another dom's boy.) In a wonderful divergence from the Mr. Benson tradition, however, the submissive turns out to be not quite subdued after all: "irrepressible" is how the long-suffering narrator describes him.
The next story in the novel takes a darker turn, and the author shows considerable skill at mixing tragedy with comedy.
Alas, McGinley, like most other BDSM writers, is better at describing naked bodies than at describing the characters' surroundings. Usually, I try not to quibble over such matters, but it's hard for me to believe that a Renaissance scholar who carries around a volume with phrases like this--
o--o--o
The canker blooms have full as deep a dye
As the perfumed tincture of the roses,
Hang on such thorns, and play as wantonly
When summer's breath their masked buds discloses . . .
o--o--o
--would proceed to describe his surroundings in this manner: "I throw myself into winterizing the cabin: chop lots of wood, finish up roof repairs, install storm windows, and seal gaps in the wooden walls." There is precious little visual detail in the novel, and virtually no smells, tastes, senses of touch, or sounds (other than dialogue). This is a shame, because the novel, being primarily set in one location, could easily have provided the reader with some sensory hint of why the narrator so much enjoys living in the woods. One passage in particular suggests that Dr. Fell has a certain affinity with Thoreau: "I have few possessions: a laptop, sweats and jeans, a box of books. I believe luxury comes from attention to detail, not possessions."
What few descriptions of the cabin exist are slipped into the narrative in a natural manner, usually because one boy or another is doing domestic work. While the novel doesn't scrimp on scenes of sex and SM, McGinley is one of the few BDSM writers who seems to have grasped that doms occasionally emerge from their bedrooms and dungeons. The primary focus of the novel is on nonsexual training as Dr. Fell provides the boys with opportunities to expand their skills.
And not just the boys.
o--o--o
Twink slams in. "Dr. Fell, Laurie says he needs a doctor."
"A real one, not some PhD," hollers Laurie from the porch.
Twink and Dexter suck their breath in unison. I give them my cold smile.
"You two find something to do in the kitchen. I'll be busy for awhile."
Laurie is on the porch, unrepentant. His ass is a mess, but twink has done a good job of cleaning it. He looks me straight in the eye. I know a challenge when I see one.
I shut the door behind me. Laurie keeps his head held high.
"What the fuck are you up to, boy? Is your ass not sore enough?"
I can see tears glistening in his eyes, and I realize it's all bravado and he wants me out here in private.
He shakes his head. "I'm so scared, Dr. Fell. What I'm going to need is too much."
I stand next to him by the railing and put an arm around him. I've only touched to punish so far, and he whimpers in surprise.
"I don't think so, boy. Only if you fight it."
His back is rigid under my arm, and then after a second he starts to tremble.
"Stop being so proud. You know I need to bring you low before you learn better ways. But if you understand and work with me, it's easier."
I get a small sob from him, and then he puts his head on my shoulder and weeps.
"Why doesn't sir do that for me? He just ignores me; he doesn't care if I'm struggling."
"He sent you here."
He's still sobbing, and I'm rubbing his back gently.
"I know, but he never controls me, and he's having you do it, not him. I know it was wrong to use the credit card. I didn't even buy stuff I wanted."
I hide a sigh. Training Doms is much harder than training boys, but it's Laurie's doctor who is the real problem. Laurie is still babbling and his sad little remarks about how being a doctor's boy is lonely and boring confirm my thoughts. Poor Laurie. He, as I suspect are several of the group's boys, is a trophy sub. Cute, outwardly obedient, and bored out of his skull while his rich owner works on staying rich and not on being an owner.
o--o--o
*** 28 August 2009. Writing: Historians need to be sent back to school.
I don't think I'm an unreasonable person. All I wanted to know was a bit about the daily life of English schoolboys in the 1910s. I mean, if you're a twentieth-century American reading lots of schoolboy stories from that period, certain questions inevitably pop up: What do study-bedrooms look like? What sort of objects were kept in the dormitory cubicles? What sort of desks/tables did boys sit at in the classroom? What was the layout like of an average school? What subjects were studied, and at what times of the day were classes held? What is a games study? What is a day-room? What is a construe, set, crib, and prose? What is the difference between the Upper and Lower Schools, what forms do they encompass (and oh, by the way, what's a form? - but fortunately I already knew the answer to that one, having attended one), and what age groups correspond to those forms? (A hint: Not the ones in modern times.)
So, having failed to find the answer to these questions in the novels themselves, I trotted off to seek enlightenment from the historians.
And found nothing.
The closest I found to an answer to the above questions was in Sally Mitchell's The New Girl: Girls' Culture in England, 1880-1915, where she devotes a paragraph to describing the typical subjects and daily schedule of girls' schools. (I was researching schoolgirls too.) She was a bit vague when it came to describing the afternoon schedule of girls' boarding schools, but at least she made an effort.
None of the other historians did. For example, an article called "The Architecture of Public Schools" managed to devote several pages to that subject without leaving me with any sort of visual sense of a typical public-school layout, much less of a typical public-school classroom layout.
So what did the scholars talk about instead?
Suppressed homosexuals. Lack of literary representation of the working class. Tomboys who were forced to become feminine. Ill-treated working-class girls who nonetheless had the opportunity to openly express their erotic desires for each other, unlike the boys.
Honestly, by the end of my day at the university library, I was convinced that every historian of British education had joined the League to Save Oppressed Minorities.
Well, I'm going to head back to the turn-of-the-century nonfiction books on public schools. From what little I've seen of those books so far, the authors are actually interested in writing about schoolboys' daily lives. (And, every so often, their erotic desires.)
*** 28 August 2009. Mentoring: Protocol prep.
I spent six hours today revising the protocol that my apprentice and I follow. By the end, I felt like etiquette personified.
This burst of energy came after I read Robert J. Rubel's Protocol Handbook for the Leather Slave: Theory and Practice, which, paired with my recent reading of david stein's Ask the Man Who Owned Him, made me wonder how I managed to spend a year in the M/s community without feeling like a square peg in a round hole. (Oh, right. I did.) Nonetheless, Dr. Rubel's book made for fascinating reading, and I especially appreciated this passage:
"My slave and I frequently exercise our 'vocabulary kink' in the evenings by poring over the Oxford English Dictionary, happily chasing down one rabbit trail after another in this fifteen-volume set of dictionaries that weigh about seven pounds each. At this writing, we are reading the Dictionary of Differences (Parragon Books, 1993) during our evening meal. Here, we explore and discuss differences between such words as: poring/pouring, decry/descry and tortuous/torturous."
Now, that's my idea of quality M/s time.
--Cupnjava, responding a couple of years ago to one of my research requests.
For newcomers: Background to my writing entries | Background to my mentoring entries | Background to my simplicity entries | Background to my home entries.
How I reply to comments at this blog.
*** 22 August 2009. Mentoring: Two exchanges with my apprentice.
"I just want to let you know, Sir, that you're evil."
"Oh? What have I done now?"
"I had just gotten out of the shower, and I saw that you'd sent me a link to your blog, so I sat down and read the blog entry, and it was all about you saying that I'm in service to my art. And I thought, 'Oh. I guess this means I have to go work on my fabric art today.'"
"So I'm evil."
"Well, yes, Sir, but in a kind and well-meaning way."
"Isn't that the definition of a dom?"
*** 24 August 2009. Writing: Prison City research: The oyster wars.
I've finished reading John R. Wennersten's "The Oyster Wars of Chesapeake Bay." Man, does he make the turn-of-the-century Chesapeake sound like the Wild West.
"Shortly after midnight on January 28, 1871, a small boat left St. Michaels, staying close to the shore to avoid being silhouetted on the open water. As the [oyster] pirates eased their way through the ice cakes and approached the steamer they discovered only one man on duty; they quickly knocked him unconscious with a culling hammer. When they arrived at Davidson's cabin they discovered that the door was locked, and as they struggled with it, they awakened the captain. With hardly a moment to lose, Davidson [the head of the naval police force that arrested men who broke the oyster laws] leaped out of bed, grabbed his Colt revolver, and fired two shots through the door. The pirates scrambled desperately back to their skiff and were rowing wildly for the shore when Davidson fixed them in the sight of his rifle. After a short burst of fire over their heads, the oystermen surrendered and Davidson's men brought the criminals back to the Leila in shackles. While Davidson had foiled Gus Rice's plan and had arrested several of his men, this would not be the last time that the oyster police would have to fight the wily oyster pirate. Later that day in St. Michaels, Davidson wearily confessed to a state fisheries inspector that when he first went to sea he never dreamed that anyone would try to kill him over an oyster."
I especially liked the bit about the culling hammer; that's an instrument used to open oysters. The whole book is full of marvellous material. I'm all primed now to visit Calvert County in Southern Maryland, which is the place that I'm basing the setting of Master and Servant 1: The Abolitionist upon.
At some point or another in my trip preparations, I found myself saying, "Gee, I wish I'd memorized the names of all the Maryland counties, the way my fourth-grade teacher tried to persuade me to do." (Maybe if he'd done something more than present me with a list of county names to memorize, I would have found the exercise more exciting.) My decision to base the setting of the Turn-of-the-Century Toughs series on the northeastern seaboard of the U.S. - and especially on the region around Washington, D.C. - is causing me to pore non-stop over local maps. Tonight, comparing a 1910 topography map of the southern tip of Calvert County with a modern map, I discovered with delight that a certain road on the 1910 map is echoed by a road on the modern map, though the modern road is well-hidden within the maze of streets that now exist in that area.
Doug says we should be able to visit Southern Maryland before Labor Day. (For those of you who don't know, Southern Maryland is just south of where I live. Doug used to bike there, back in the days when he was doing lots of biking.) I also need to get over to the University of Maryland's main library a couple more times in order to do some more Prison City research, as well as take one more trip to the Maryland Room of Hyattsville Library, the main branch of my county's library system. Maybe the Maryland Room at the Pratt Library in Baltimore too. At the end of September, I'll be visiting Annapolis to attend my college homecoming; I plan to nip over to the Annapolis Maritime Museum while I'm there. In September/October, I'll be taking another trip or two to Dorchester County (across the Chesapeake Bay, east of Calvert County), which is where Master and Servant 3: Unmarked and three of the stories in volume two of Prison City are set. And I think I might be able to persuade Doug to take a separate visit to St. Mary's County (immediately west of Calvert County), where I need to do a bit of research. Finally, over the winter, I'll continue reading early-twentieth-century boarding-school books.
So hopefully, by the end of this winter, I'll have finished all of the Chesapeake and boarding-school portions of my Prison City research. Cross my fingers, over the winter I'd like to be able to finish the five novellas that take place in the Second and Third Landsteads, the bay-fronting territories in my series. At the very least, I should be able to get the first two finished, which will allow me to publish "Master and Servant" next year.
*** 26 August 2009. Reading: Recommendation of Syd McGinley's The Complete Dr. Fell, Volume 1: Lost.
Syd McGinley: The Complete Dr. Fell, Volume 1: Lost. (Author's Website. Protagonist's Website, including online excerpts from the Dr. Fell stories.) Male homoerotic fiction, male friendship fiction, leather fiction, contemporary fiction, erotic fiction, spirituality themes. ¶ Fiction books (collecting stories originally published as fiction e-books). ¶ On-screen sex. On-screen violence. ¶ Archive of my reviews.
A group of rich masters swap their leatherboys back and forth with cheerful abandon. Then one master meets an arrogant boy who needs to be taken down a few knotches.
I have to admit that this trope - which was first popularized in the late 1970s through Mr. Benson, by John Preston, who in turn stole much of his material from earlier writers - is not my favorite BDSM storyline. Maybe it's because I'm such a realist that I expect the masters to be arguing over which master's protocol the boys should follow.
Syd McGinley, though, has done what I would have thought impossible: The Complete Dr. Fell, Volume 1: Lost is a realistic version of this trope. It's not only realistic, but it retains Preston's admirable mixture of humor and pathos.
McGinley's novel actually reminds me more closely of Preston's I Once Had a Master, which Preston based on episodes in his own life. Unlike Mr. Benson, which nobody could describe as realistic (with the possible exception of the chapter set in the Mineshaft bar), I Once Had a Master sought to mold porn fantasy into something that could pass as literary fiction. McGinley has done the same. Amidst all the unlikely erotic passages - a cock ring made of hollies? - the novel addresses such topics as domestic abuse, immigration laws, illiteracy, and Robert's Rules of Order. "Jesus, he's spent too long in corporate land," the narrator says of another character. "I mean, it is important to discuss who is having what mark put on which boy, but do we really need a fucking agenda?"
In addition, to my very great relief, the dominant who narrates the story is not rich.
Dr. John Fell is an engaging protagonist: a scholarly curmudgeon who has a soft spot for abused and ill-trained leatherboys. I can't say that I agree with every decision he makes, not to mention his propensity for thrashing bare flesh with wild plants. (I winced during those passages, since I'm allergic to just about everything I touch in my garden.) But that's entirely the point: this is no Mr. Benson, no idealization of an infallible master. Instead, Dr. Fell is struggling with a personal demon: an inability to move beyond a past tragedy, which inhibits his relations with others.
Fortunately, he is surrounded by a loving and supportive community. (Dr. Fell describe this as a D/s group, though it reads to me as M/s, since all of the group's boys are owned and appear to have little say on how their lives are led.) Many BDSM stories zero in on a sexual pairing, leaving the reader with the impression that there's a solid wall between BDSM partners and the rest of the world. McGinley's approach is refreshingly different, presenting a network of BDSM relationships, and even hinting at what is taking place in the vanilla world. (The passage where Dr. Fell doms his students during a writing exercise is particularly amusing.)
Although Dr. Fell frequents a leather bar (how he got past the doorman before he bought himself a leather jacket is left an unanswered question), there's not much gay leather culture in the novel. On the other hand, there's a strong enough gay atmosphere that one doesn't feel that McGinley has stolen the plotline from yaoi manga. (In a tongue-in-cheek sequence, McGinley portrays a boy as harboring such manga.) Although the characters - in another realistic touch - range from bear to effeminate, Dr. Fell himself is very much a product of masculine culture: "We're saved from having to do awkward macho congratulations," he reports at one point. Thanks to the first-person narration, we get to witness his inner turmoil, but only occasionally are the other characters granted a glimpse of what lies behind his forbidding countenance.
The novel begins a bit awkwardly, with Dr. Fell subduing a recalcitrant submissive by sheer force and, it might be added, no condom. (The characters' attitudes toward condomless anal sex are frustratingly inconsistent; at one point, a boy prepares contributions for an AIDS foundation mere hours before barebacking another dom's boy.) In a wonderful divergence from the Mr. Benson tradition, however, the submissive turns out to be not quite subdued after all: "irrepressible" is how the long-suffering narrator describes him.
The next story in the novel takes a darker turn, and the author shows considerable skill at mixing tragedy with comedy.
Alas, McGinley, like most other BDSM writers, is better at describing naked bodies than at describing the characters' surroundings. Usually, I try not to quibble over such matters, but it's hard for me to believe that a Renaissance scholar who carries around a volume with phrases like this--
The canker blooms have full as deep a dye
As the perfumed tincture of the roses,
Hang on such thorns, and play as wantonly
When summer's breath their masked buds discloses . . .
--would proceed to describe his surroundings in this manner: "I throw myself into winterizing the cabin: chop lots of wood, finish up roof repairs, install storm windows, and seal gaps in the wooden walls." There is precious little visual detail in the novel, and virtually no smells, tastes, senses of touch, or sounds (other than dialogue). This is a shame, because the novel, being primarily set in one location, could easily have provided the reader with some sensory hint of why the narrator so much enjoys living in the woods. One passage in particular suggests that Dr. Fell has a certain affinity with Thoreau: "I have few possessions: a laptop, sweats and jeans, a box of books. I believe luxury comes from attention to detail, not possessions."
What few descriptions of the cabin exist are slipped into the narrative in a natural manner, usually because one boy or another is doing domestic work. While the novel doesn't scrimp on scenes of sex and SM, McGinley is one of the few BDSM writers who seems to have grasped that doms occasionally emerge from their bedrooms and dungeons. The primary focus of the novel is on nonsexual training as Dr. Fell provides the boys with opportunities to expand their skills.
And not just the boys.
Twink slams in. "Dr. Fell, Laurie says he needs a doctor."
"A real one, not some PhD," hollers Laurie from the porch.
Twink and Dexter suck their breath in unison. I give them my cold smile.
"You two find something to do in the kitchen. I'll be busy for awhile."
Laurie is on the porch, unrepentant. His ass is a mess, but twink has done a good job of cleaning it. He looks me straight in the eye. I know a challenge when I see one.
I shut the door behind me. Laurie keeps his head held high.
"What the fuck are you up to, boy? Is your ass not sore enough?"
I can see tears glistening in his eyes, and I realize it's all bravado and he wants me out here in private.
He shakes his head. "I'm so scared, Dr. Fell. What I'm going to need is too much."
I stand next to him by the railing and put an arm around him. I've only touched to punish so far, and he whimpers in surprise.
"I don't think so, boy. Only if you fight it."
His back is rigid under my arm, and then after a second he starts to tremble.
"Stop being so proud. You know I need to bring you low before you learn better ways. But if you understand and work with me, it's easier."
I get a small sob from him, and then he puts his head on my shoulder and weeps.
"Why doesn't sir do that for me? He just ignores me; he doesn't care if I'm struggling."
"He sent you here."
He's still sobbing, and I'm rubbing his back gently.
"I know, but he never controls me, and he's having you do it, not him. I know it was wrong to use the credit card. I didn't even buy stuff I wanted."
I hide a sigh. Training Doms is much harder than training boys, but it's Laurie's doctor who is the real problem. Laurie is still babbling and his sad little remarks about how being a doctor's boy is lonely and boring confirm my thoughts. Poor Laurie. He, as I suspect are several of the group's boys, is a trophy sub. Cute, outwardly obedient, and bored out of his skull while his rich owner works on staying rich and not on being an owner.
*** 28 August 2009. Writing: Historians need to be sent back to school.
I don't think I'm an unreasonable person. All I wanted to know was a bit about the daily life of English schoolboys in the 1910s. I mean, if you're a twentieth-century American reading lots of schoolboy stories from that period, certain questions inevitably pop up: What do study-bedrooms look like? What sort of objects were kept in the dormitory cubicles? What sort of desks/tables did boys sit at in the classroom? What was the layout like of an average school? What subjects were studied, and at what times of the day were classes held? What is a games study? What is a day-room? What is a construe, set, crib, and prose? What is the difference between the Upper and Lower Schools, what forms do they encompass (and oh, by the way, what's a form? - but fortunately I already knew the answer to that one, having attended one), and what age groups correspond to those forms? (A hint: Not the ones in modern times.)
So, having failed to find the answer to these questions in the novels themselves, I trotted off to seek enlightenment from the historians.
And found nothing.
The closest I found to an answer to the above questions was in Sally Mitchell's The New Girl: Girls' Culture in England, 1880-1915, where she devotes a paragraph to describing the typical subjects and daily schedule of girls' schools. (I was researching schoolgirls too.) She was a bit vague when it came to describing the afternoon schedule of girls' boarding schools, but at least she made an effort.
None of the other historians did. For example, an article called "The Architecture of Public Schools" managed to devote several pages to that subject without leaving me with any sort of visual sense of a typical public-school layout, much less of a typical public-school classroom layout.
So what did the scholars talk about instead?
Suppressed homosexuals. Lack of literary representation of the working class. Tomboys who were forced to become feminine. Ill-treated working-class girls who nonetheless had the opportunity to openly express their erotic desires for each other, unlike the boys.
Honestly, by the end of my day at the university library, I was convinced that every historian of British education had joined the League to Save Oppressed Minorities.
Well, I'm going to head back to the turn-of-the-century nonfiction books on public schools. From what little I've seen of those books so far, the authors are actually interested in writing about schoolboys' daily lives. (And, every so often, their erotic desires.)
*** 28 August 2009. Mentoring: Protocol prep.
I spent six hours today revising the protocol that my apprentice and I follow. By the end, I felt like etiquette personified.
This burst of energy came after I read Robert J. Rubel's Protocol Handbook for the Leather Slave: Theory and Practice, which, paired with my recent reading of david stein's Ask the Man Who Owned Him, made me wonder how I managed to spend a year in the M/s community without feeling like a square peg in a round hole. (Oh, right. I did.) Nonetheless, Dr. Rubel's book made for fascinating reading, and I especially appreciated this passage:
"My slave and I frequently exercise our 'vocabulary kink' in the evenings by poring over the Oxford English Dictionary, happily chasing down one rabbit trail after another in this fifteen-volume set of dictionaries that weigh about seven pounds each. At this writing, we are reading the Dictionary of Differences (Parragon Books, 1993) during our evening meal. Here, we explore and discuss differences between such words as: poring/pouring, decry/descry and tortuous/torturous."
Now, that's my idea of quality M/s time.
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