By Joshua Ryan
Chapter 3: Exceeding the Ideal
The flight was beautiful — the turquoise sea studded with emerald islands, then the purple thrust of St. Bevons, relic of an extinct volcano, with a city relaxing on its flank.
The Wellington International Airport is small but friendly. In an American airport, you have to fend for yourself. At Wellington, a gang of attendants in brown uniforms lines up in the luggage department, waiting to take your bags and carry them to Ground Transportation. The first one in line grabbed my belongings–one bag in the left hand, one in the right, the third tucked under his arm–and before I knew it he was stowing it all in the trunk of a cab.
The guy was young and fresh-faced and very cute, with a strand of yellow hair poking out from under his little brown cap. Too bad our encounter was so rushed! I reached in my pocket for an outsized tip when the cab driver, an elderly black man with a rum-thick accent, intervened. “No wurries, sirr. You doan tip thee slappie boys.”
Slappie boys! So this little corn-fed Midwesterner with the brown shorts and the brown short-sleeved shirt and the glint of a silver necklace underneath his collar—he was a slappie! Obviously, St. Bevons had several ranks of hierarchy, and they weren’t arranged in order of race. But fuck! How hot can this be!
The slappie bowed quickly and disappeared into the terminal, and I was off to Wellington—the City, as it’s known, since there’s only one of them on St. Bevons Island. My driver politely pointed to various landmarks that he thought significant, most of them banks. The impression was that of a tiny Singapore—a new city with clusters of modern office buildings, boxes of glass, and an old city of low, comfortable, pastel buildings, clearly “native.” Between the two was the British city, a region of broad streets and wide sidewalks, with a grand boulevard five blocks long. We passed the Houses of Parliament and the Anglican Cathedral and halted at the doors of the King George Hotel.
We had barely stopped when another young man in brown rushed out to open my door, take my bags from the trunk, and carry them inside, all before I finished paying the driver. By the time I got through the doorway, my bags and my slappie had disappeared in the distance. “You will find your luggage at the desk, sir,” said the doorman in brown.
The King George Hotel, Wellington, St. Bevons Island — maybe it was just my North American sense of superiority, but I was actually shocked by how grand it was. From the coat of arms above the big glass doors to the great marble desk at the other end of the long, columned lobby, it was like a stage-set for the year’s most elaborate production. “Out of the past comes a drama rich in history, rich in romance, rich in riches.” Something like that. The desk alone was a masterpiece—a gray granite counter supported by a pair of white marble dolphins, surmounted by a mahogany arch two stories high. What was it that dolphins were supposed to symbolize? Was it love, or was it death? Or was it both–the transition to the World Beyond? That must be it. That’s what I learned in art history, anyway.
Next to the desk was my luggage, and next to the luggage was my slappie, standing at attention. I walked more slowly, intending to study him in some detail. This one was a sturdy white boy with muscles filling his clothes. But just when I was coming up on him, the man at the desk said something, and the slappie moved off, into the shadows. All I saw was his back, receding; but in those two or three seconds I got a fair view of his uniform. If you’re into BDSM, uniforms are always of interest.
At first sight, this slappie garb said “delivery man”—cheap cloth, unobtrusive color, bottom-end accessories (square brown boots, generic cap), function-only style (straight-cut shirt you don’t waste time tucking in). There was one indication that the designer was gay: the shorts ended significantly above the knee and fitted tight around the ass. No doubt that was one of the tropical adaptations to which Roger had referred. This slappie looked like he had a ver’ nice ass. Maybe they all did—they all had to work hard, didn’t they? I caught another detail, but this was also utilitarian: in the center of the back, across the shoulders, there was black lettering that said
MIKEY
SLP 19047
Of course I don’t actually recall the number, but you get the point about the way the uniform was designed. You’d never need to ask the guy’s name. And the number would remove any possible confusion with any other “Mikey.”
There was a line of slappies sitting on a bench in the corner, and Mikey sat down with them, a machine that was now switched off. I felt the way you do when the waiter serves you a familiar dish in a new way: interesting presentation! Very interesting presentation.
The man behind the desk was a lordly Indian with a beautiful tie and an elegant accent. No slappie he! In the suavest possible manner he checked me in. When I extended my credit card he said, “Oh, nooooo sir, your friend has already paid your account. He has dictated this note for you.”
The note rested in a thick creamy envelope with a golden crown above the magic words King George Hotel. “My dear Thomas, I am so sorry that our schedules could not coincide. Please enjoy the pleasures of St. Bevons. I look forward to meeting you in future, when I can be your host in reality and not merely in fantasy. R.” A thoughtful note! And I was grateful for the gift of the room—I guess. I could have paid for it myself, very easily. Roger knew that. Was he being nice? Or was he besting a competitor?
“Your room is on the sixth floor, Mr. Lansing, overlooking the town. I am sure you will be pleased by it.” Then a bell rang, and Mikey scurried back to the desk. The clerk handed him a key; he bowed and hoisted my bags. “This way to the lift, sir.”
The elevator was old-fashioned, small. It was hardly big enough for me and Mikey and the luggage he was porting. It was also slow. Was I supposed to talk to him? Or could I just look? His head was lowered, and I took the opportunity to inspect him more closely.
Something in his speech told me that Mikey was from someplace not far from Brooklyn. Broad body, broad face; I couldn’t see his eyes, but back in the States he’d have no trouble being picked as somebody’s extra-large size house pet. Unlike the slappie at the airport, the slappies at the hotel all seemed to be wearing long-sleeved shirts, buttoned to the neck—the slappie equivalent of a coat and tie? But if there was any possibility of mistaking him for a normal employee, all you had to do was notice what was stamped on the front of his shirt, over the left pec:
MY NAME IS
MIKEY
SLP 19047
HOW MAY I SERVE YOU?
Whoa! I thought. I can think of a few ways. I remembered what Roger had told me about leaving the slappies alone, but by the time the elevator got to my floor I was totally hard.
The clerk was right. It was a great room with a spectacular view: boulevard below, volcanic hills beyond—volcanic, but green, green beyond anything you expect to see from a city. The service was also beyond anything you expect. It was the slappie that opened the curtains, adjusted the temperature control, and engaged the music system (Mozart, innocuous quartet); it was the slappie that set my bags on the luggage racks, spread the bags open, and asked permission to “lay out your things for you, sir.”
Did that mean, “Would you like to fuck me? I am part of your service”? I wished! “Sure,” I answered.
Immediately he was bending over my largest bag, starting to unpack it. His shirt slid up, and yeah, he had a great looking body. But the taut shorts revealed something more. On his ass—on the left cheek, to be exact—was another advertisement of who he was, what he was, and what he was willing to do—again, in black letters:
MY NAME IS
MIKEY
SLP 19047
HOW MAY I SERVE YOU?
If you were a guy that got happy about seeing subs being put through their routines, you’d be very happy to see Mikey work. He quickly deposited every item in its proper place—shirts in the shirt drawers; slacks hung their legs in the big, cedar-smelling closet; backpack extracted and uncrumpled and laid in the center of the little shelf just above the closet floor . . . . It was a serious temptation, watching the big young body in the big, brown, numbered shirt folding my undies and inserting them ever so carefully into the proper drawer. Everything said, “Reach out and grab me . . . . ”
The slappie shut my bags with an efficient snap and pivoted to leave, and I noticed the same name and number lettered on the front of his thick right thigh:
MIKEY
SLP 19047
Very unstylish. Very functional. Very enticing. If you wanted to know if he was Mikey, he needn’t be wearing ALL his clothes . . . .
He bowed and left. Fuck! I thought. I’ve got to find out more about this stuff! It was sensational—and you didn’t even need to tip!
That evening I dined in the Oak Room. “Oh yes,” said the maître d’, “Mr. Lansing. We have your reservation.” Roger had made it, then thoughtfully changed it to a reservation for one.
I always hated to be the sole person in the room who’s dining alone. But the Oak Room was dark and quiet, there was a booth just for me, and there were handsome young slappies filling my water glass, renewing my bread supply, and taking off my dishes as soon as I had used them. White, black, Indian, Chinese—they all looked like hapless collegians who were caught in some spring break that got out of control and were now serving eternal sentences in those ugly brown suits. Attitudes? It was interesting to see the combination of outward subservience and—I hoped that’s what I was seeing—inward resistance. Hopeless rebellion. Hopeless regret. A new dimension of BDSM? I wanted to find out more about that.
The waiters weren’t slappies. They were old black queens who were living well by their tips and their obviously phony deference to diners they regarded as, compared with them, hopelessly immature. Unless you asserted yourself, they would order every dish and every drink for you, the whole thing, then congratulate you on your choices. I asserted myself. And the meal was excellent. A plate of escargot, a bottle of Rhone valley, and a dish of truite amandine never pleased me more. The chef was good; the atmosphere reassuringly old school; the service, out of this world. Literally. Forget the waiters; you can get snobs like them in any expensive place. The flavor of the dish was the slappies. Fantasizing about slavery was one thing; enjoying the humble service of a troop of hot young numbered guys doing everything they could to please me—that was quite another. If I wanted a sweet looking servant to sweep the crumbs off my table, he immediately swept the crumbs off my table. And asked me if there was anything else, sir? It was like the first time I ever had sex, only much better arranged.
I returned to my room, slipped off my tie, and opened the bottle of champagne that management had thoughtfully sent me. What, I wondered, had each of those slappies been thinking as he ministered to my desires? Slim little Benjy, with nimble fingers sliding the butter onto my plate. Dark-eyed, heavy-muscled Jared, shunting back and forth in his big slappie boots, lugging a tray of dishes that I don’t think I could have lifted. And above all, big buff Mikey— I bet he was a real dom before they made him a slappie on St. Bevons. Did he hate every second he spent arranging my boxers, or was he happy that he had a lifetime of discipline and security ahead of him? Either way, the idea was too hot for my crotch to resist. Even better, I thought, as I sank into one of best sessions of self-abuse I had ever experienced, I was booked for three more days of this. If it kept going in the same way, I’d never want to leave.
To be continued…
