“If a man does not keep pace with his companions, perhaps it is because he hears a different drummer. Let him step to the music which he hears, however measured or far away.”

—Henry David Thoreau

The stories you are about to read were written in an earlier time. In this prehistoric era there was plenty of BDSM-themed kink, but seeking it out was way more challenging than it is today. There was no such thing as a hookup app for your phone. Phones didn’t fit in your pocket back then. They were plugged in to the wall at home, and there were only two kinds: rotary dial and push button. Nobody had a blog or a social media presence.

People were concerned then with many of the same things as today, including the economy, pollution and crime. Because people tended to carry cash on them, there were more burglaries and muggings. No matter where you lived, everyone knew that Times Square was dangerous. Going downtown in any city was dangerous.

But if you were gay and happened to be excited by things like bondage and leather, venturing downtown at some point to try to find a magazine or two might be worth the risk. Growing up before the internet existed made exploring secret fetishes involving kink much more tricky. Before cable TV there were just three channels, and if you wanted to watch something different you had to get up and turn the knob. Every once in a while something listed in TV Guide would be the source of intense interest, such as a television special on Houdini. You might have grown up fascinated by the predicaments that the Caped Crusader and his sidekick found themselves trapped in at the end of almost every episode of Batman (the TV show, not the blockbuster movies of later decades). At the movies, “Cruising” with Al Pacino sure looked interesting — if it was playing in your local theater and you could scare up enough courage to go.

This was definitely before s/m had gone mainstream. And if you did not happen to live in a big city, with leather bars and clubs, your only other outlet was porn, which meant magazines.

Maybe you were a college student living, say, in the dorms at Michigan State University. To get your hands on some porn you had to go to downtown Lansing, to the triple-X bookstore. You had to go all the way to the back of the store to the gay section, where there were two or three bins of magazines, almost all of it vanilla, with titles like Blueboy and Inches. But if you were kinky, these boring magazines really didn’t do much for you. If you found a copy of Honcho, that might be more appealing. But the ultimate prize — the Holy Grail, if you will — was Drummer magazine.

It’s hard to describe the level of excitement that a copy of Drummer caused for an MSU student who had grown up without knowing anything about the leather scene. It was like Dorothy opening the door in Munchkinland, discovering a new world. Just looking at the leather muscle cop on the cover, gazing directly into your soul from behind his mirrored sunglasses, would cause your heart to beat faster. Yes, Drummer magazine opened up a whole universe of possibilities that up until now a college kid living in the Midwest could not imagine even existed.

Published out of San Francisco starting in the mid 1970s (Guy Baldwin has called this “The Golden Age of Leather”), Drummer featured pictures of fit, hairy men with an attitude. These guys proudly wore leather jocks and harnesses and had real handcuffs. On these pages were also plenty of original artwork, articles about titleholder contests, personal ads and much more. In the personal ads you could meet someone for a good time, or find a life partner. Many no doubt did make such connections over the years. It was done by mail back then.

The title of the magazine derived from a famous quote from Henry David Thoreau’s Walden (“If a man does not keep pace with his companions, perhaps it is because he hears a different drummer…”), and this quote was printed in every issue, just above the table of contents.

The founder and publisher of Drummer was John Embry (of blessed memory), who used the pseudonym Robert Payne. In addition to being a talented businessman, he was also a gifted writer of BDSM fantasy fiction. To the delight of so many readers, every issue of Drummer included a few stories by Payne and many other authors. These hot, exciting and imaginative tales described all sorts of s/m encounters, from the simple to the exotic.

In addition to Drummer magazine, Embry aka Robert Payne also published several ancillary publications, including Foreskin Quarterly, Alternate, Mach and Manifest Reader. It was in the pages of these magazines that many stories about “The Exchange” were published under Payne’s byline.

As you will soon read, The Exchange was a secret underground network where male slaves were trained, bought and sold. The slaves were taught obedience, to take a beating, to provide sexual service, and to work their bodies in the gym or in manual labor jobs.

Remember, these stories are from an earlier era. Unlike much gay BDSM fiction today, most of these stories happen to be written from the Master’s perspective. They have what might be called an “Old Guard” sensibility to them. Roles were more strictly defined. You were either a Master or a slave. Nipple rings were used on slaves as a means of control, not for adornment or as a source of pleasure. In general, switching roles was not really common. Fetishes like rubber, skinhead gear and sneakers hadn’t manifested themselves yet. But the deep, man-on-man desire to dominate or submit was very powerful and very intense.

Yes, the slavery described in “The Exchange” was quite real. There was no escape. However, as the reader comes to realize, many of the enslaved would have ended up in prison anyway. And the conditions, for the most part, were better than one would find in prison — except with more discipline. There was better food, better care, certainly a more interesting life. Some voluntarily became slaves. Others were grabbed off the streets. It was also possible for an “alpha male” lawyer or corporate executive to become a slave, and in one instance as you will read, a Master was transformed into a slave. There were dog slaves, work slaves, sex slaves.

Does The Exchange still exist? On the dark web, perhaps? If stories about such a place were to be posted today to an online gay bondage website, such as the Prison Library section of MetalbondNYC.com, it’s not hard to imagine that some readers would post comments objecting to their tone. Too sadistic, some might say. And those who are slaves, in this fictional realm, are not all there voluntarily. And unfortunately, sometimes the slaves can be beaten too harshly or otherwise mistreated.

It’s the kind of situation that Amnesty International would have a huge problem with. But before you decide to call the authorities to bust up the slave ring, don’t bother. The secret gay s/m mafia is powerful, and besides, they have already bribed the local police force. If you were to call them, they would probably just laugh. Who knows, they might even send over some muscular, leather-clad cops with tasers and nightsticks, and drag your own ass into slavery! You’ll be collared and leashed and forced to work out naked. Eventually, after you’ve had a metal ring pierced into your septum and you’ve spent more nights than you can remember bolted to the wall in a cold jail cell, you’ll be put on the auction block yourself. Who will buy you? How much will he pay? Will he be hot?

If thinking about such things excites you, you might want to read on.

Thanks to Capricorn Literary and its eBook edition of “The Exchange,” you won’t need to venture to a dangerous neighborhood to read about these classic BDSM fantasies. The stories in this volume — and many related eBooks that will become available soon from the same publisher — belong in the pantheon of gay kink smut.

It is a real treasure that this fiction is being offered again now, in this modern medium. Enjoy!

MetalbondNYC

October 2018

 

‘The Exchange & Other Stories’ is available for purchase on Amazon: