By Joshua Ryan

Chapter 4: Travelers Are Often Moody

I rose early and hit the breakfast room, a cream-and-gilt confection where the morning light shone softly on the cut flowers at my table, and slappies bowed and asked permission to butter my muffin.  After observing them all at my leisure I decided that the hottest one was a smiling young black with “Omar” on his shirt and shorts and one of those silver necklaces—which all of them seemed to be wearing — glinting from behind his collar, a nice adornment for a shapely neck.  When I was ready to leave I snapped my fingers in his direction, and in seconds he was at my table, bowing.

“I want a tour of the island,” I said.  And I want you to give it to me!  But I didn’t say that.  I knew they wouldn’t let a hotel servant out for that purpose, or pretense.  Although maybe, if I offered enough money . . . .    But no–I remembered Roger’s advice.  “And I want it now,” I said.

“Yess sirr,” he answered, in the island intonation.  “If you will please to relax here a moment, sir, I will convey your wishes sir.”

Busboy Omar scurried to the waiter, who scowled, as I’d supposed he would, at my not consulting him.  But he snapped his fingers to another slappie, who must have been higher up in the chain of being, and that one rushed out to the lobby—to talk to the concierge, I assume.  In ten minutes the waiter informed me that my tour would begin at the hotel entrance, and would I please to follow “the boy,” yet another slappie, this one a little Chinese with “Edsel” on his shirt, who opened the door to a limousine with “Imperial Tours” in modest but prominent letters painted on its door.  That’s service.

My guide and driver was not a slappie but a middle-aged Brit who seemed to have been marooned on St. Bevons at some point in the distant past and had decided to spend his exile in irony.  In six hours he explained to me the “interesting but peculiar, very peculiar” history and culture of “the St. Bees, as we insist on calling ourselves.”  I remember little of what he taught me.  There seem to have been pirates and wars with the Dutch and the French and so on.  At the harbor he recited three popular accounts of Admiral Trueblood’s siege, none of them, according to him, correct.  Passing slowly through the streets of Wellington, he made me notice “the Italianate fenestration” of certain commercial buildings and the “faux baroque piano nobile” of the Courts building.

I was sick of him immediately, and also getting a bit sick of St. Bevons.  The more I saw of it, the more it seemed like a tropical version of Windsor, Ontario.  My mood was influenced by the paucity of slappies to be seen on the streets.  There were some clusters of them working around the major buildings—sweeping sidewalks, washing windows, waiting by the doors to usher freemen in—but few others seemed to be visible.  When they became visible, my guide had little to say.  Driving into the suburbs, we passed one of those things you always see in such places—a huge concrete building with “Garden Depot” signed across its body.  There was the ordinary parking lot, and the ordinary customers going through the doors.  Then, as we turned the corner, I saw a line of slappies waiting at the rear.

I asked him to slow, but he just kept going.  “I assume,” he said, “you have already made the acquaintance of our peculiar institution.  We are a nation that can afford the cost of slappies.  We can afford to see them loitering about.  The slappies you just saw were sent by their owners — pardon me, we must say EMPLOYERS — to stand about all day for any offer of hard labor.  This is why the St. Bees do not want to work–there is always a slappie to do the job.  A blissful arrangement, is it not?  A great benefit to all parties.  At last, justice has been achieved.  But now, on the right you can see . . . . ”

Things got a little better when we reached the countryside.  St. Bevons is so small, you can drive all the way around it in three hours or so.  We didn’t go that far, but we did see a lot of the countryside, a lot of farms — very pleasant, if you like that kind of thing.  The farms gave out as we reached the volcanic sides of Mt. Nelson.  The last eruption, I was told, had been “oh, thousands and thousands of years ago,” as was evident by the green grass covering most of the mountain.  At the top we came to “the observatory,” a parking lot where you could look down into the volcano’s dead crater.  When you were bored with that, you could swing around to view the rest of the island—the flat green farms, the sudden slopes, the pretentious City.

“Named for the Duke of Wellington,” I remarked, happy to show my guide that he wasn’t the only one who knew something about history.

“No, sir.  Not at all.  Named for Lieutenant Richard Wellington, the favorite of Admiral Trueblood.  I think of our volcano as Mt. Catamite.”

Of course it was just his silly idea of a test.  If I turned out to know the meaning of “favorite” and “catamite,” I must be gay.  He’d been hinting in that direction all day long.

“Oh,” I said, and the conversation died.

The last stop was the kind you always have on a tour—an opportunity, for which the guide has been appropriately bribed, to purchase characteristic local goods, in this case odd wooden carvings with garish paint, represented as the folk art of the Bees.  The atmosphere grew chilly when I neglected to buy.  The shop did have another, more welcome function: they served lunch there.  It happened on a little patio, under a colorful but pointless umbrella—pointless because morning clouds can last most of the day on St. Bevons.  But it was warm enough, and pleasant enough.  The food was actually good, despite my disappointment at not being attended by slappies.  Experience had already spoiled me for the services of freemen.  “Fine dining” back home would no longer be fine.  I’d have one less pleasure on my list.

I knew I was whining—I was rich, I had nothing but time to do whatever I wanted, it shouldn’t be so hard to feel happy—but what the hell, I hadn’t been happy for years.  Maybe never.  What was I missing?  What was wrong with me?  I lifted my eyes and looked at the fields in the distance.  They were green with some kind of crop, but there were big brown bugs on the crop, and the bugs were—slappies!

“Right,” said my guide, returning to me after a long chat with the restaurateur.  “More of them.  They seem to be everywhere, don’t they?  Bugs.  Insects.  They should stay out in the fields, like any other bug.  Shouldn’t be allowed in town.  Have you finished your wine?  Shall we return?”

“Can’t we get any closer?  I’d like to see . . . .”

“Sorry, sir; government farm.  Off limits.   Besides, we need to get back.”  So we went back, and I paid him and tipped him.  You have to do that with freemen.

I had two or three hours before dinner, and I decided to invest them in the King George Lounge.  Expensive, dark, ridiculously plummy—a fine place to sit by myself and nurse a sudden depression.  And at that hour, it seemed like there were fewer customers in the place than slappies.  They were scurrying around in the shadows, moving drinks and adjusting cushions, not permitted to waste time on any thoughts they might have.  The atmosphere—so British, so soaked with servitude—reminded me of the moment when I discovered the tales of Richard Davies.  You know, those stories where rich men are always buying and using slaves, and the slaves are always young men who, but for some naivete or chance misdeed, would be leading normal lives.  The stories gave you the sense that anything could happen.  When a servant named Riley came to my booth and asked me if I would like a cigar to go with my drink I had no trouble saying yes.

I didn’t really like cigars, but they last for a long time, and if you don’t like them you can always position them on an ashtray and use them as an excuse to linger.  It didn’t take very many drinks to put me in the mood to spill some ashes on the table, just to get Riley to come by with his name and number on his shorts and sweep the ashes off.  He was another strong, athletic type that didn’t look like he would have chosen to spend his life being eye candy for wealthy gays, and I had a wonderful time making him clean up and bring me a drink and then clean up again.  At some point I remember sloshing my brandy onto the table, and when Riley brought me another asking him where he came from and how he got to be a slappie.  He blushed and said he was “not allowed to talk about that sir, things just happen sir.”

Disappointing.  No flirtation.  Was it my age?  How easy it is to feel depressed, suddenly, dully. unreasonably, even in the best of circumstances.

I left the lounge and went up to my room.  I took a nap. Then it was 7 o’clock, and time for dinner.

The Oak Room again.  This time I had the “American Prime Rib,” which was better than anything you could get in America, if you computed the value of the scenery.  When you ordered that dish, four servants, the usual white, black, Indian, Chinese, paraded it to your table and laid it in front of you on its shiny steel plate.  Like a sacrifice.  Like somebody dragged to the top of the pyramid and slain before the Aztec gods, and now you get to eat him.  Yeah, I was drunk, but not so drunk that I couldn’t enjoy watching Jared’s thick blunt fingers guiding the little silver crumb-scraper, the busboy’s buddy, in delicate maneuvers around my coffee, my cream, my dessert, my cognac, my water glass, my forks and spoons, and of course my hands, without touching or disrupting anything.  It was instructive to see that someone who must have been king rat in some college gym could be trained to execute such a delicate feat.  Only once did our hands touch, and then all the imprisoned anger and futile resentment seemed to jump, like an electric spark, from his fingers to mine.

“Pardon me, sir,” he muttered.  “Very sorry, sir.  Won’t happen again, sir.”

I said nothing.  I was thinking, what would it be like to start as a big, pushy guy and then have to live your life herding crumbs in a little slappie get-up?  Would your head change right away, as soon as you realized you were gonna be a slappie for life, or did they wear you down gradually?  I wished I knew what was going on inside that slappie’s skull.  How did he adjust to it?  How well would he adjust to it?  Observing Jared’s bulky figure as it returned to the kitchen, I wondered how many slappies were actually relieved that they didn’t need to prove themselves as men anymore, that all they had to do was learn how to clean up after some asshole tourist.  Maybe even Jared would get to like it.  Most common complaint in the BDSM world: the doms do all the work—restraining, training, punishing the subs.  All the subs have to do is relax and enjoy it.

I went to my room very promptly; I wanted to be fresh for my appointment with Major Timmons at 9:00 a.m.  As I was going to sleep, I wondered what Jared was doing right then.  It was a natural thought—much more natural than Jared wondering what I would be doing.  Everyone understands what it’s like to live a normal life, to be free to master your environment.  Nobody’s interested to find out how prison guards feel; you know how they feel.  But everybody wants to know what it’s like to be one of the unfree, the mastered; what it’s like to be a slave or a convict.  Or a slappie.  While I drifted to sleep in my miraculously soft king bed, maybe Jared was feeling good that the restaurant was closed and he wouldn’t have to service anyone like me for the next few hours.  Or maybe he was feeling the enormous pleasures of the damned . . . .

I only had time to realize how strange my thoughts were getting, before sleep came and mastered me.

To be continued …