Date: Mon, 11 Jun 2007 00:31:04 +0200
From: Julian Obedient <julian.obedient@gmail.com>
Subject: Love and Slavery

Love and Slavery

Dex?

Yeah? Gunther turned and looked at the boy.

How old are you?

Thirty-seven.

Wow!

What do you mean, Wow?

I don't mean anything...except...

Except?

Shy silence.

You want to call me grandpa.

The full moon was shining and the clear smell of primaveal green was
sharp and heady. The streets were empty and for a change the city was
quiet.

I don't mean that.

What do you mean?

I mean...

They stopped and leaned against a parapet and looked out at the Hudson.

Come on, Dexter said, gently poking the kid in the ribs because he saw
he was embarrassed.

I mean, I think I'm in love with you.

Dexter looked at the kid happily.

I mean, is that alright?

Yeah, it's alright. It's better than alright. It's just the way it ought to be.

Does that mean...

Yea, kid, it means, he said, and, putting an arm around his waist,
kissed the boy's eyes.

But you don't think...

Not right now, no. I'm too busy feeling. Something I haven't gotten to
do a lot of these past few years.

I know. I want to change all that, Billy said.

Dexter took hold off him by the back of his neck with his free hand,
thumb pointing up, index finger pointing out, and drew the boy to him
and kissed him very gently, again, very tenderly, and felt the boy
melt in his arms, melt into him.

* * *

It wasn't long before Billy heard about Dexter's past life and asked
him directly if it was true that there was a torture chamber in the
basement of his country house and if he really were a master
hypnotist.

Dexter looked up from the page he was writing.

The answer to both questions, Dexter told him, was yes. Although, he
added, it wasn't really much of a torture chamber. But still.

Billy was excited and frightened and confused.

Why didn't you tell me?

What was there to tell?

That!

And what difference would it have made?

For one thing, it would have been being honest.

I have been honest.

And, and I would have known what to expect before, before...you know...I
let myself...you know...get like this.

Get like what? What do you expect? What are you talking about, Billy,
honestly? Dexter's tone was gentle and he came close to the boy to
caress him.

Don't touch me, Billy said. I mean You're thirty-seven and I'm
nineteen. That's a big difference.

Yes, it is, Dexter said, sitting back down at his desk. But why is
that important now?

How do I know what you've done to me that I don't know you've done to me?

What? Gunther said, truly puzzled.

How do I know you haven't hypnotized me to make me feel the way I do
and then made me forget that you did?

By trusting yourself. By trusting that what you feel is what you want
to feel and that the feelings are yours because you feel them.

That's double talk, Billy said.

Don't you trust your feelings?

How can I tell?

Just by feeling what you feel.

How do I know that's what I really feel? How do I know you aren't
making me feel the way I do?

How does anybody?

Stop being evasive, Billy said, poking a log in the fireplace. We're
not talking about anybody. We're talking about what you might have
done to me without my knowing it.

Do you think I would do that to you?

How can I tell? You have done it in the past.

Never what you're saying.

Why should I believe you?

About what?

About anything.

Dexter rose from his desk again and walked over to Billy squatting in
front of the fire.

What if I told you, looking you directly in the eyes, that I haven't
hypnotized you? Would you believe me then?

How could I? Billy said standing up and turning to his lover.

O, Dex. When you look into my eyes! I want to, but how can I when...

You have to find the answer to that inside yourself.

Billy began to cry, softly and deeply, like a child violently parted
from his mother.

Dexter looked at him with a look of great tenderness, but made no move
toward the boy until at last Billy threw himself into his arms, still
sobbing and saying in half-breaths between sobs, I'm so confused. For
the first time in my life, I like the way I feel, and I can't be sure
that the feelings are really mine.

And then Dexter clasped him and held him and did not let go of him.

* * *

Highway 16 from Hardwick to Glover is a beautiful road in early
October as it winds through the Vermont landscape, richly colored by
the profusion of gold and ruby foliage.

The night had just settled over the rolling hillsides as the car
turned off 16 by the cemetery and started up the Sheffield Road passed
the Bread and Puppet pine forest to the huge red barn Dexter had
restored and turned into a house.

Billy was excited like a kid by its rustic beauty and Gothic intricacy
when they stepped inside. It was all oak and leather, beams and boards
and hewed stone.

Dexter made a fire in the fireplace in the center of the room and in
the Jodel in the corner, and they broiled salmon, baked apples, and
cooked brown rice on the cast iron gas stove in the kitchen. They sat
cross-legged by the hearth on a bearskin rug to eat. Afterwards,
Dexter got a bottle from the cellar, and they smoked home-grown weed
and drank champagne for dessert.

Billy stretched out on the rug and lay with his head in Gunther's lap,
and Gunther's fingers played idly tracing figure eights upon the boy's
bare torso.

Dex?

Billy?

It took him time to say it. Then:

Is this the place where you have a dungeon?

I don't know if you could really call it a dungeon, he laughed, but,
yeah, in the basement there's a...

Would you show it to me? I'd like to see it, Billy interrupted before
he could finish.

Now?

If it's ok with you.

Come on, he said, tossing Billy the yellow cashmere sweater he left on
the couch.

* * *

They went out into the darkness lighted by the moon and walked in a
meadow passed several apple trees until they came to a formation of
rocks inside a grove on a sloping hillside. There among the rocks just
visible when Dexter shone his flashlight on it was a slab of old wood
covered with pine needles which you would probably never notice if
your attention weren't drawn to it. It seemed like a bulkhead into the
hillside or a trap door into the earth. It was, and Dexter reached
down and digging his fingers under it, lifted it to reveal a flight of
solid stone steps into a cavernous underground room.

Go ahead, he motioned to Billy and swept the beam of his flashlight
over the steps. Go first. I'll light the way. Don't worry, I'm right
behind you.

Billy took the well-worn steps cautiously and found himself, at the
bottom, in a room perhaps ten feet by ten feet by ten feet with a dirt
floor, rock walls and a ceiling of horizontal beams supported by
several vertical -- tree trunks it seemed.

Dexter swept the strong beam of his flashlight along the walls and let
it stop over a wood-framed doorway in one corner half as high as the
wall.

It goes into a tunnel that runs under the house, he said. This was one
of the stations on the Underground Railroad. You see, it wasn't
actually a dungeon at all, but the place for slaves seeking freedom to
flee to and hide and rest and be fed until they could be transported
from here. The next stop was Craftsbury. Some went on to Canada, and
some stayed in Vermont, usually going to Burlington or Brattleboro.
Some crossed over into New York. But it was dangerous, especially
after Lemuel Shaw's ruling in Massachusetts on the Fugitive Slave Act
required that any runaway slave caught in the North had to be returned
to his or her southern master.

Wow! was all Billy said scanning the room. It was cold and damp.

But did you ever use it as a dungeon?

I've brought guys here.

Like you're bringing me here now?

Not exactly.

What do you mean not exactly?

There are guys who like to feel what it's like to be abandoned or
desperate. They get off on it. Or they can only cum when they get
scared. And there are times that I've obliged them.

But not any more?

No.

How come?

In order to do that, I had to play a role. I had to become callous. I
actually had to enjoy other guys' fear and suffering and get off on
the power I had over them. And I actually had to have that power. When
I left a guy shackled up in here in the dark with the hatch down, he
had to trust that I would come back for him soon enough. But there
always had to be an edge of real fear that I might not or that when I
did I might not free him, that I might permanently enslave him. And I
had to develop a real desire for that, too, for unconditional power
over another man. And that power-lust, well, sometimes I started to
feel it and to get off on it. And sometimes it nearly got the better
of me. And I didn't like that. It didn't agree with me, or, actually,
I didn't agree with it. Then, also, in some weird, spooky way I felt
that I was violating what was really a sacred space and betraying the
runaway slaves, breaking faith with history. Being a master means
playing with fire. It has nasty consequences and it goes against
everything I believe in.

With that Dexter extinguished the beam of the flashlight and there was
a darkness which Billy had never seen before.

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